Now You Are Become Death (the Destroyer of Souls)
by Self-Inflicted Insanity
Summary: This story is about Pietro and Wanda's (platonic) sibling relationship, and is going to contain multiple AUs that either continue from or change Pietro's death scene. There will be some continue-it chapters, some fix-it chapters, and some break-it-even-more chapters.
1. AoU: What It Feels Like To Die

**AN: This going to be a story about Wanda and Pietro. This first chapter is their POVs (but third-person) of the end of the movie, but all the chapters after this will be continuations or AUs of what could have happened.  
**

 **The title of this story is inspired by** J. Robert Oppenheimer **'s quote about the atomic bombings in Japan, where he recalled and translated the words of Vishnu in the Hindu scripture the _Bhagavad-Gita_ : **"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." **  
**

 **Genres of this chapter: Angst. Tragedy.**

 **Further notes at the end of the chapter.**

* * *

 **You Didn't See That Coming (now did you?)  
**

 _Breathe, Pietro, breathe, he thought to himself. You can't run if you can't breathe._

 _He was leaning against a wall, just pausing, just needing to catch his breath, just needing a moment, just a couple seconds, it wouldn't take him long to catch his breath._

 _He was fast enough to catch_ anything, _it would only take him a couple seconds to catch his breath so he could keep running._

 _It only took him a couple seconds to catch his breath before he took off running._

 _He was running, but running felt like flying, he'd always thought. In his dreams, his feet never even touched the ground._

 _In reality, they didn't touch the ground, either—they punished it mercilessly, every footstep a lightning strike, every footfall a thunderclap, his movement a hurricane gust of wind, and his hair was the silver of rainclouds about his face and cold hazel eyes that only warmed for Wanda._

 _He was quick, so quick, his sheer quickness leaving behind streaks of blue energy, like glowsticks waved in the dark, his monumental velocity enough that it took but a single well-aimed punch for the Ultron robots to break apart at his touch, crumble and fall like buildings in an earthquake._

 _He never waited to watch the robots hit the ground—he knew they would._

 _There weren't many robots left, now, just a few stragglers after the robot massacre around the core. The Avengers could fight, he'd give them that, and the battle was a thrill, energy through his veins, adrenalin. Action was the only other reason, after Wanda, that Pietro ever smiled._

 _Wanda. She was protecting the core from any straggling robots, and he'd left her there. He'd left her. But she could take care of herself, he knew, she was strong, stronger than him, he knew this, he didn't like leaving her, but he knew this, she was stronger, and all these years he may have kept the two of them living, but she had kept them hoping._

 _Help get the civilians to the ships, she'd told him, and that was what he was doing, sweeping the city streets for straggling civilians, picking them up and depositing them at the carriers, before running back for more._

 _All Wanda had to do was speak, and he would do anything. Often times she didn't even need to speak. They'd long ago perfect a form of speech that needed no words, even before they became enhanced and she was always touching his mind, always a calming presence to keep him grounded when the FIRE took him over._

 _He could feel her there, even now, her presence warm and scarlet, her mind alert and focused. At the first spark of fear he could be at her side in a second. Till then, she was okay, and he was okay, everything was okay._

 _His lungs stung a little, but that was okay. His legs shook a little, but that was okay._

 _Punch a robot here, save a few civilians there, oh look, some more civilians, drop them off safe, come back, check this street, check that street, run through this building, re-check the areas that are already checked, just in case, save the civilians of his home country, he hates the fear on their faces, he_ knows _that fear, two days of that terrible fear forever ingrained in his memory._

 _The way Wanda had shivered. The way tears had tracked trails in the dust on her cheeks. The way they dared not move, petrified with terror. They wanted to live._

 _For each other, they would live._

 _There were gunshots, he heard them before he ran over and saw the ship shooting, saw that American, the Avenger, Hawkeye, and he was turning his body in preparation for the onslaught of bullets, curved around a young boy, that terrible fear on the child's face._

 _He saw Wanda's face, carved with that same terror. She'd been ten years old. They'd both been. He remembered the twisting in his gut. Every time they shifted, they'd tensed with that paralyzing fear, sure that they were going to die. They'd been so sure._

 _Hawkeye could not run, he was a snail. He was not fast enough to outrun bullets. Turning to protect the child was commendable, but it would do nothing. Pietro was well acquainted with the way bullets seared through flesh. Well acquainted._

 _These thoughts were flashing through his brain even as he was already running, his feet punishing the ground for trying to hold him._

 _Gravity could not hold him down. The laws of physics could not stop him._

 _A quick silver flash, that's all he was._

 _He could not move Hawkeye and the child out of the way, there was no time for that, for fumbling to grab them securely and run._

 _He could not catch all the bullets, there were too many._

 _But he was nothing if not quick. Quick thinking, quick acting._

 _There was a car only a few feet away, and Pietro ran straight at hit and used his momentum to help him kick it—he had no super-strength, but he had super-speed, which in turn gave him a degree of super-strength, as HYDRA had found in their many tests, and yes, the tests hurt, always, but all the pain was more than worth it, more than—onto its side and the several feet over, but it was going to skid too far, he could tell, and he had to run to the other side, put his back up against it and dig his heels in to stop it so the metal of the car would block the bullets from the Avenger and the child._

 _That's what happened, not that he was even thinking about it—no, he was just reacting, all his coherent thoughts used up with registering PAIN each time a bullet hit—his leg once, his chest multiple times, and PAIN was just another kind of FIRE, and one he knew how to work through without Wanda's help._

 _He was well acquainted with the searing of bullets through flesh, after all. Well acquainted._

 _Another thing to thank HYDRA for._

 _He was just barely faster than bullets._

 _He was just barely faster, and maybe he could run headfirst into a wall and come out without a concussion, be slammed into the ground without cracking a single rib, but bullets could still pierce his flesh, and he felt the beat of his heart stutter when a bullet shot through it._

 _But most of the bullets hit the car, and none of them hit Hawkeye or the child, so it would have been okay, except for Wanda._

 _Because he'd promised her he'd never leave, and he knew he was going to. Like everything else he did, Pietro bled out quickly._

 _The plane passed overhead, the gunfire stopped, and Hawkeye looked up with astonishment at the fact that he was still alive._

 _Pietro would have run away, because it would have been hilarious if the Avenger had absolutely no idea how he was still living, seriously, that would have been hilarious, but Pietro was on FIRE and his vision was swimming with black and he could feel his body failing to support him._

 _He waited for Hawkeye's keen eyes to spot him, and offered a smirk, made sure it was smug, because holy shit, the Avenger's face was hilarious, he wished Wanda could see that expression, wish he'd be alive to tell her about it._

" _You didn't see_ that _coming," Pietro said, and it wasn't a question this time, it was a statement, and he felt like he won._

 _The last thing he felt as the world went black was the PAIN in Wanda's scream, and he was sorry to have caused it._

 _He was so sorry it hurt more than the numerous bullet wounds._

 _I'm sorry,_ _was his last thought. I won, but even when I win I lose._

 _Time was always the thing he had too much of in this slow world, but this time he didn't even have time to think: Forgive me, Wanda. I love you._

* * *

 **If You Don't Leave Then You'll Die (I just did)**

She'd told Pietro to go. She would be okay.

She knew she'd be okay. Pietro knew it, too. No robot would be able to touch her or the core.

She'd never stopped to think that anything—anything at all—could touch Pietro. He was too fast. Far too fast.

They weren't even battling anymore. The battle was over, almost all the robots were gone, all he was doing was evacuating the civilians and getting them off the floating, ever-rising city.

He should have been okay.

Wanda had felt that he was okay, his mind a blue blur in her awareness, all excitement and purpose and a secret glee he always experience when running, no matter the circumstances.

There were very few robots left to come after the core, now, and most of them were already damaged, crawling towards desperately, only to be met with a blast of scarlet energy.

The energy thrummed through her like electricity, but she wasn't just a conduit. No, she was a nuclear power plant, and there were depths of her power that she didn't touch, that she was scared of and tried to forget about, only skimming the surface of the well of power within her. In a way, she wasn't even completely aware that it was there.

But it felt right, the energy, just like she knew the speed felt right to Pietro. They weren't complete until the experiments. They were _made_ to be like this, maybe even _born_ for it. They were trained for it and now they _lived_ for it.

They lived for each other.

And so it had never even crossed Wanda's mind that either she or Pietro wouldn't making it out of this.

"You can still walk away from this," Captain America (what a stupid name) had said.

"Oh, we will," she'd said. She'd been so sure. _So sure._

One moment, Pietro had been okay.

And then she'd felt alarm, panic, fear, contempt, determination, her name, and then PAIN.

Stabs of pain in her chest, her leg, stabbing feelings in her head of pride, triumph, smugness, regret, love, and all the while PAIN and FIRE, thoughts from him that were far too familiar.

Her heart was torn from her, like a cold, metallic hand reached right into her chest, clasped its fingers around her heart and _ripped,_ pulling it out raw and bloody, crushing it along with half or her soul.

She didn't even register the fact that she was falling to her feet and _screaming_. She never had realized that Pietro never screamed because she always screamed for him, that the reason he never cried was because she cried his tears, that the only way he was comforted was by comforting her, that the only thing that made him truly happy was her being happy, that the only thing that really hurt him was her pain.

The last thing she would ever remember of Pietro was a sense of crippling regret and of love so large it ached.

She didn't even realize that his PAIN ripped out not only her heart and soul, but the safety switch on her magic, too. She didn't even register the magic exploding from her and destroying all the robots within a hundred-meter radius of her.

And then everything was gone, just like that.

No more pain. No more fire. No more love or regret.

When she opened her eyes, she was kneeling on the ground, the destroyed bodies of robots littered all around her, and she felt nothing.

It wasn't until she saw a plane crash not far off that anger seared through her, what, in Pietro's mind, had always been FIRE, and she realized there was really no other way to describe it: the anger, the fury, the hatred and loathing and a million other nuances of flaming emotions that seared and burned and scorched.

She knew who had been in that plane. She knew that plane had killed Pietro (glimpses and images had flashed through her mind, a plane, bullets, a car, Hawkeye, a child that had reminded him of her—her brother was always a protector).

Now there was nothing within her but the need for _revenge_. She would _avenge_ her brother's death.

"You're an Avenger," Hawkeye had told her.

She hadn't answered. At least, not in words. And it had taken her a few moments to gather her wits enough to answer with actions.

She'd never liked fighting, never enjoyed the fierce action, the adrenalin rush, the things her brother had breathed like oxygen.

He'd always been the braver one, never hesitating before jumping into fights and possible pain. He'd always been a man of action.

Words, though. Words were usually _her_ forte. His mind would race so fast that he couldn't always phrase his thoughts and feelings, but always knew what was going on inside his head, always, and she'd always spoken for the both of them. He was so fast, but he always waited for her. Waited for her to catch up. Waited for her to give the word.

He'd never left her behind, till now.

No, that wasn't right—he hadn't left her. He'd _never_ left her.

 _He'd been taken from her._

And for that, Ultron would die.

She walked with a burning calmness towards the bus that she'd seen the robot crash into.

The world was too bright, too sharp. Her hands tingled like she was holding them too close to a fire.

She made her way through the ripped hole in the side of the bus. She was not rushed. Ultron would not escape.

She found him lying there, looking broken _(but not broken enough)._

"Wanda," he said, in an electronic voice that sent surges of hate through her blood. "If you don't leave then you'll die."

She felt nothing but hatred and contempt.

" _I just did,"_ she said. "Do you know what it _felt like?"_

She held out a hand, latching her magic around his robotic heart.

She needed him to _feel_ this. To feel even just a semblance of her pain.

She needed him to feel PAIN before he died.

The metal of his body shifted, and she watched his face the entire time _(oh how she wished robots could SCREAM)_ as she yanked his heart out of his body and into her hand.

The piece of metal was hot and dripping in her hand, and she looked at it in disgust, before looking back at Ultron's face as he died.

She thought maybe she'd seen PAIN there, and it made her lips curl upwards.

When her eyes faded from scarlet to hazel, her gaze was dark, cold and empty.

* * *

 ** _AN#1:_ I've only seen AAoU twice. the first time I watched it, I thought Pietro picked Clint and the child up and moved them. But the second time I watched it, they didn't seem to move, and it looked to me like a car appeared where there hadn't been a car before. Who really knows what actually happened in that scene, but this second interpretation is what I'm going with cuz it made the most sense to me. **

* * *

_**AN#2:** In the comics, Pietro's eyes are blue and Wanda's are green. When I looked up pictures of Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, they both seemed to have eyes that sometimes looked blue, sometimes look green, sometimes looked kinda brown. So I went with them both having hazel eyes here, which I figure also makes sense with them being twins and having both had dark hair, before Pietro's was turned white by his superspeed transformation (at least, I'm assuming that his powers turned his hair white, rather than him dying it). _

* * *

**_AN#3:_ Let me make one thing clear: I'm not angry about Pietro being killed off in the MCU. **

_Yes, it was sad. But yet, not surprising. At all. Because deep down I'd really known that he was going to die, from the very first teaser trailer where there was that clip of Wanda falling to her knees and screaming in absolutely pain._

 **And it... makes sense to kill him off, it really of all because it will give the Scarlet Witch motivation. Also because Wanda and Pietro are SO close that they'd stick together and it would be them against the world, even against the rest of the Avengers, kinda, so then the movie verse doesn't have to deal with Wanda and Pietro being crazy protective over each other, and it will force Wanda to have to connect with the rest of the team.**

 _Additionally, it's obvious that Wanda and Vision are going to get together, and Pietro is a protective jerk, let's face it, so removing him from the situation makes it so there won't be a whole bunch of drama when Wanda and Vision get together, because Pietro would be jealous, and the movies are so much shorter and farther between than the comics, so they simply can't cover as much material or give enough depth and attention to so many characters._

 **And then of course there's the thing with Pietro's superspeed - superspeed is either incredibly boring and not used to its full potential, or it's way too powerful and simply HAS too much potential, and Pietro's character would cause so much frustration for everyone that there simply wouldn't be time to cover the problems he would cause. And then of course there's the fact that just Pietro's _personality,_ he pretty much doesn't connect to _anyone_ except for his sister, so he's not a strategic character to keep around if he can't make interesting connections.**

 _Wanda, though - Wanda's powers are incredibly awesome, the energy manipulation for battle, and the whole mind-whammy thing that connects her to /everyone/ around her - she's grounded, she's thoughtful, and she connects to people. She's a perfect character to keep around and develop further._

 **And** **Wanda and Vision as a romantic pairing? You know most people are going to be attracted to a romantic relationship like that.** **I'm actually really happy about Vision, though. I never liked him at all in the comics, but he's frikkin AWESOME in the movie!verse.**

 _I'm just sad that we got so little Maximoff twinmance, because it's my fave. But there don't seem to be many people out there who find that kind of relationship interesting. And a lot of people seem to ship Wanda and Pietro together as a twincest thing, which I just don't get. People can have a close relationship that's completely platonic, y'know. Personally, I love sibling relationships. **  
**_

 **So... I'm disappointed that we got so little of the Maximoff twins and that he had to die, but... I can't be mad about it, because it makes sense.**

 _Don't get me wrong - my eyes were totally stinging something awful in that scene. But there's really no point in being angry about it, because it was a strategic story device for future Marvel movies to come. As a writer, I have great respect for character development and plot devices._

 **And hey: Pietro dying is FANTASTIC fanfiction material ;) I mean, what would there be to write about the Maximoff twins about if he hadn't died? I'm actually really happy about this opportunity.** _  
_

* * *

 ** _AN#4:_ **_This story isn't done yet! I currently have plans for like 12 more chapters at the moment ;3 All separate from each other, either continuations or AUs. I'm going to be playing around a lot with different things :)_ ** _  
_**


	2. AU I: Now You're Dead

**AN: A continue-it chapter. What I imagine Wanda's reaction to Pietro's death to be.**

 **Genres of this chapter: Angst. Hurt and No Comfort. And does it count as Tragedy if Pietro's already dead, or is something only Tragedy if a character actively dies?**

* * *

 **AU I: Now You're Dead (and so am I)  
**

One of Ultron's robots had made it to the core. Wanda could feel the floating city falling apart.

She didn't care. She didn't care at all.

Let the explosion kill her. She was already dead, after all. She'd already died, and this time—this time she wouldn't feel anything.

She knelt there in the wreckage of the bus looking at Ultron's dead, mangled form.

The anger was gone and now she felt nothing.

The city was falling apart around her, and she didn't care.

And then, from the sky, dropping down from the hole in the top of the bus, was Ultron's vision, who was definitely not Ultron. She could read him, even though she wasn't trying. Her reading the minds of those around her was automatic, now. It was, after all, a kind of reading, and once you learned to read you couldn't make yourself _not_ read the words you saw.

He swept her up in his arms and took off into the sky, and she didn't care about that, either.

She idly watched the floating city explode into smithereens, but she felt nothing.

The synthezoid's arms were surprisingly warm around her, but the warmth didn't feel real, and it only served to make her feel colder.

His thoughts were a vibrant yellow blush of color and noble intentions. The world was beautiful through his eyes, but it wasn't real, and only served to make the world seem uglier.

He felt concern for her, relief that they'd made it off the city before it exploded. He loved the feeling of flying. He thought she was beautiful. He thought they'd won, but he felt no pride, just a sense of relief and of duty. He didn't know that Pietro was dead.

She could feel what he felt, but it wasn't real. Not to her. She could really feel anything.

When the synthezoid set her down gently on the Helicarrier, she didn't even bother to thank him before turning away and walking off as if in a trance.

Vision felt hurt, but no anger. She didn't feel anything. She didn't care.

The weight of her feet pressing against the floor didn't feel real. Her clothing against her skin didn't feel real. It was like she was a ghost, an incorporeal being stuck in a corporeal plane.

She didn't have to ask where her brother was, she needed only to touch the minds around her, pry around for the information.

He was in the medical wing. There was nothing that could be done for him, but the medical wing wasn't just to keep the bodies of the injured and the dying. It was for the dead, too.

Nobody tried to stop her. Nobody tried to talk to her.

She walked as if in a trance, eyes blank and staring straight ahead, moving with an unconcerned assurance, an unhurried purpose. Her movements flowed like mist. Her limbs felt foreign on her body, like they weren't hers.

She found Hawkeye sitting next to Pietro's body, staring down at his own hands, muttering about stupid, heroic, idiotic kids and stupid, self-sacrificing, arrogant, insufferable, admirable jerks.

He didn't hear her come in. He didn't see her till she'd floated over and was standing right next to him, looking down at Pietro's body.

Hazel eyes half open, dull, flat, lifeless. His shirt and pants completely soaked with blood, with bullet holes in his body exactly where she knew they'd be. Exactly where she'd felt them.

"Wanda!" Hawkeye said in surprise, looking at her. She didn't look at him. She didn't need to.

"Look, I..." the Avenger tried.

"I know," she said. He felt guilt, pain, awe, sorrow, regret, anger, frustration, fear.

Pietro was the cause of most of those feelings. Ultron was the cause of the rest. The fear, however, was caused by her.

She felt nothing. It wasn't the Avenger's fault. It was any of the Avengers' fault.

It was Ultron's fault, and her fault.

She shouldn't have told him to go. Should've let him stay. Should've begged him to stay.

She stared at Pietro. It was obvious he was dead, because of his eyes. It was obvious he was dead, because he wasn't moving. It was obvious he was dead, because she couldn't feel his mind. She couldn't feel herself.

"Wanda..." Hawkeye choked out. He felt so much guilt and pain and sorrow.

She felt nothing.

"It wasn't your fault," she told him, no emotion in her voice. There was no emotion in any part of her.

He felt confusion. He'd expect her to be crying, yelling, shouting, sobbing, something. Had expected her to clutch her dead twin's body and cry brokenly in denial.

She wasn't in denial. Pietro was dead.

She knew he was dead, because she felt nothing.

He'd been avenged, and now there was nothing she could do for him, nothing she could do for herself.

He'd kept her living, after their parents had been killed. He'd kept her smiling, laughing, loving.

His mind had been her safe place, when all the minds around her were too much. His heartbeat had been her lullaby, when they'd fallen asleep cuddling for warmth, for safety, arms wrapped around each other and faces buried in shirts or in hair so they wouldn't have to see the cold world around them.

She didn't reach out to touch his skin that used to be warm and was now cold. That wasn't Pietro, lying there, not really.

That was just the body that had housed him, hair bleached by jealous wind and skirted time, limbs that had propelled him across the ground now stiff with death.

Nothing could keep him from moving, it seemed, save Death.

She'd always thought he was unstoppable.

And he had been, hadn't he? Certainly, all those bullet wounds hadn't stopped him from saving the life of the Avenger and the child who'd reminded him of her.

"I'm sorry..." Hawkeye said, a broken breath.

The Avenger was mourning, aching with feelings, but she felt nothing.

She'd died with Pietro. There wasn't enough of her left to mourn him.

Apparently the news of Pietro's death had finally circled around, because some of the other Avengers filed in.

When Stark saw the body, riddled with bullet holes and covered in blood, he swore under his breath. Shock. Guilt. Anger. Guilt. Self-hatred.

"He died saving me and a kid," Hawkeye explained to them softly. "He was a hero."

A hand touched Wanda's shoulder, feeling phantom.

"I'm sorry, Wanda," said Captain America. Guilt. Sorrow. Empathy.

Then the synthezoid entered the room. Pain. "I'm so sorry, Wanda. I didn't know."

She felt their emotions like a faint drizzle on the calloused soles of her feet.

"Don't bury him," she told them, still looking at her twin's face. He looked like Death. She knew when Death came for her, Death would look like Pietro. "He wouldn't want to lie rotting in the ground, a victim to the sands of time."

"We can have his body cremated," Captain America said. "You can scatter his ashes."

"That would be acceptable," she said.

Pietro had always been like fire, burning quick and fast and out of control. She'd been the water, calmer and more stable, but capable of all different forms: freezing, liquid, gaseous.

Feeling awkward, Stark cleared his throat for a moment, before quickly leaving, feeling sick. Maybe the crippling guilt would be enough to punish him for creating the weapons that killed her parents and creating the robot that killed her brother. She hoped he got nightmares and had no-one to comfort him afterwards.

"Are you going to be alright, Wanda?" Captain America asked.

"You know I'm not," she said tonelessly.

She could sense him nod, before he, too, left.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" the synthezoid asked.

"You can leave," she said.

He hesitated for only a moment before he did as she'd requested.

Then it was just Hawkeye, who didn't want to leave.

"Pietro..." Hawkeye said, having trouble getting words out. "He was a hero."

"Trust me," Wanda said. There was no emotion in her voice. "I knew that long before you did."

"I..." Hawkeye tried again. "My wife... we're going to have a son."

"I know," Wanda said. It had constantly been at the forefront of his mind.

"I'd like, if you don't mind, to name our son after your brother," Hawkeye said, and now that he'd gotten over the inability to speak, he was starting to ramble. "Not the first name, of course, 'cause Natasha already called that, but since it's a boy it's gonna be Nathaniel, but, uhh, we haven't decided on a middle name yet, and I was thinking, Pietro would be a good middle name for him. Since, y'know, if it wasn't for your brother, I wouldn't be alive to be going home to my wife and kids..."

If Wanda had been capable of being touched, the sentiment would have been oddly touching.

"Pietro would be a fine middle name for your son," she said.

Relief. "Thank you," Hawkeye said, but there was so much more than just thanks in his tone.

"You're welcome," she said, because it was the automatic response to an expression of thanks, but there was still no emotion in her tone. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to be alone."

"Uh, yeah," Hawkeye said as he started to leave. "Of course." He closed the door.

And then it was just her and the dead body of half her soul resting on medical bed.

She slept there, that night, curled up in a chair she'd dragged over to the bed.

The farthest she'd ever slept away from him since she was ten years old was in their cells at H.Y.D.R.A., when they were separated by a foot of reinforced wall between them.

She wasn't sure if she actually slept or not. She felt nothing, and she didn't dream. All she experienced was an endless darkness.

Hawkeye found her there in the morning, told her to go wash up, get some breakfast, the helicarrier would be landing, the civilians were already being taken care of, where she wanted to go after this would be sorted out, things she didn't care about.

He'd felt fear, when he'd looked at her, and when she glanced at a mirror in the bathrooms she'd realized why.

She looked almost as dead as Pietro.

Funny, but she wasn't really surprised. She didn't really care. She didn't feel anything.

But unlike her brother's, her heart was still beating.


	3. AU II: Cold and Dead Inside

**AN: This chapter takes place maybe a few weeks after the events of AoU.**

 **Tags : Grief. Loss. Hurt/Comfort. Depression. Tears. ******A little bit of the pairing ScarletVision (that's their pairing name, right?).** Maybe a tiny bit of humor courtesy of members of the team who are not Wanda.  
**

* * *

 **AU II: Cold and Dead Inside (without you)**

Wanda's heart was still beating, but it felt cold, dead. She was existing but she wasn't living.

She wasn't alive, not really.

But the advantage to that? If she wasn't alive, then she couldn't fear death. _(She knew what it felt like to die. People fear death because they fear the unknown. Death was no longer unknown to her.)_

She couldn't fear injury, fear pain. _(She was well acquainted with pain, with hurting. She didn't fear pain because she knew it. She didn't fear pain, because what could it do to her? Kill her? All pain either went away eventually or resulted in death, and she didn't fear Death.)_

She couldn't give a damn whether people loved her or hated her or didn't give a damn about her. _(The only person who mattered to her was gone. Nobody else mattered, and therefore nothing they thought or felt about her mattered.)_

She decided to join the Avengers, become an Avenger In Training. There was nothing else she could do with her life.

She hadn't been able to save her brother, but if she became an Avenger, she could save other lives, maybe keep the loved ones of the people whose lives she would save from becoming as dead as her. She could save more lives than just the lives that she saved.

Yes, she would become an Avenger. Her brother would have wanted her too— _he_ would have wanted to become an Avenger.

She could feel it during that battle against Ultron, how much Pietro had been enjoying fighting the robots, enjoying saving the civilians. He was born to be a hero, she thought. He always was a hero— _her_ hero.

She wanted to become a hero for him.

He was always so alive. She wanted to live for him, but she couldn't feel anything anymore, just grim determination. She wanted to be an Avenger.

She scared people, she knew this, could feel it in the minds around her. Her fellow Avengers in Training—War Machine, Falcon, the newly named Vision—when they would balk at a particularly tough training session, she would step right in, hands and eyes blazing scarlet.

"Boys," Wanda would mutter under her breath with a shake of her head as she manipulated the energy around her, because that one word was so much easier to say than the more accurate: _"People who fear because they don't know what it feels like to die."_

She didn't fear anymore—for what was fear? She couldn't fear because there was nothing she was afraid of losing, for she had nothing left to lose.

When she'd lost Pietro, she'd lost everything. She'd lost herself.

She wasn't Wanda anymore, not really. Now? She was the Scarlet Witch.

 _The Scarlet Witch._

She hadn't come up with the name—that had been the Falcon, after a particularly grueling training exercise that left Falcon panting and lying on the floor.

"Man, gimme a break, I'm like the only regular guy on this team!" he'd complained, even while grinning. "I mean, I'm training with a synthezoid," he nodded at Vision, who was standing there calmly, not even breathing hard, "a guy in a full-body metal suit," he nodded at War Machine, who, if he was tired at all, it was impossible to tell because his faceplate was down, and if his muscles were trembling, well, then the suit was holding him up, "and Wanda," he'd finished, waving a tired hand at the Enhanced, who was standing there with clenched fists and dark-rimmed scarlet eyes. "And she's, like, some kinda scarlet _witch_ or somethin'!"

The Scarlet Witch impressed people, she knew this, could feel it in the minds around her. When she sparred with the Black Widow—that woman scared the shit out of the boys, as well she should—she would pull all the magic tricks she knew, sometimes make up new ones, but eventually the Black Widow would strike her down.

"You're good," the Black Widow said, once, holding out a hand to help her up.

The Scarlet Witch sent a scarlet blast of energy at her, and the Black Widow flipped out of the way, impressed that Wanda hadn't fallen into her trap.

"You're better," the Scarlet Witch had said coolly, and the Black Widow had smirked.

"You show promise, Wanda," the Black Widow had said. "You'll get there."

Yes, she would get there. She'd get there for Pietro, who never would, who had always believed in her.

"See that, boys?" the Black Widow said, looking at the other Avengers In Training who were sitting watching on the sidelines as she gestured a thumb at the Scarlet Witch. "Wanda knows what she's doing."

"What, you mean complimenting you?" Rhodey asked dubiously. "Is that supposed to get us in your favor and convince you to catch us a break?"

"Please, your highness, who is so much better at fighting than any of us," Sam said to the Black Widow as he sat slumped against the wall, "don't make us do any more push-ups today!"

"Very well," the Black Widow consented, a stray glint of humor in her eyes, quirking a corner of her lips, "you can do fifty more pull-ups instead."

"Look what you did," Rhodey accused.

Sam groaned. "Rogers!" he called, as Captain America entered the room. "Steve, man, put an end to this tyrant's regime!"

"Fifty more pull-ups, soldier!" Captain America called from across the training room, amusement evident in his voice.

Sam groaned, slowly pushing himself to his feet and trudging over to the push-up bar. "What kinda friend are you, man?" he said to Steve.

"Believe me," Steve grinned, "I only do this because I care about you."

"Yeah? Then do you care about him?" Sam said, gesturing over at Rhodey, who was still on the other side of the room, watching the Scarlet Witch and the Black Widow had started sparring again.

"Rhodes!" Steve barked.

Rhodey's head snapped up to look at him.

Steve pointed to the pull-up bar. "Fifty more pull-ups for you, too!"

Grumbling under his breath, Rhodey jogged over to join Sam on the pull-up bar.

Steve looked at Vision.

"All due respect, sir," Vision said politely, "you know doing fifty push-ups will not in the least effect me."

"Make him! Bench-press! The two-ton! Weight again!" Sam huffed out between pull-ups. "Or something!"

"That likewise would hardly affect me," Vision said as he glided over. "I can alter the density of my body to give myself strength enough to lift up to fifty tons*."

There was a _thump_ from the center of the room as the Black Widow tossed the Scarlet Witch down onto the mat, getting on top of her to hold her arms above her head.

"Give up?" the Black Widow smirked.

"Avengers don't give up," the Scarlet Witch said, practically sneering. The Black Widow had pinned her arms, but not her hands, and with a wiggle of her fingers, she sent the Black Widow flying back.

The Scarlet Witch got quickly to her feet and took a fighting stance, meeting the Black Widow's strangely empty gaze. She'd seen the Black Widow's past, experienced the darkest and most chilling of Natasha's memories; she wondered idly who between the two of them was more empty, now, more cold.

"Come at me again," the Scarlet Witch said, and the Black Widow had been all too pleased to comply.

"Twenty-seven!" Sam said as he did another pull-up.

"Stop counting aloud, you're throwing me off!" Rhodey shot back.

"Twenty-eight!"

"Dammit," Rhodey cursed. "What am I on now? Twenty-two?"

"Twenty-nine!"

"Sam, I swear—!"

"Don't worry about it, man," Sam huffed, as the two of them raised themselves up to the bar, then lowered themselves, completely out of sync. "You can always start over from zero!"

The Black Widow's lips were quirking in amusement at them even as she sparred with Wanda, dodging the scarlet blasts of energy with spidery preciseness and finesse.

The Scarlet Witch's faced showed nothing but tense concentration.

The Vision and Steve watched the two women spar.

"I worry for Wanda," Vision admitted quietly. "She hasn't been the same since..."

"She'll never be the same," Steve murmured. "Losing someone that close to you? Someone who's been your closest friend since childhood?" He looked down, and if he'd been wearing jeans, he would have shoved his hands into his pockets—but, as it was, he was wearing his Captain America suit, and could only hitch his fingers on his belt. "It kills you inside."

Vision looked over at him. "You speak of Bucky," he said, more a statement than a question.

Steve's answer was to remain silent.

"I take it Sam couldn't find anything and ran out of leads," Vision said.

"He just..." Steve took a deep breath that shuddered slightly. "Disappeared." His voice was not much more than a murmur. "Like a ghost."

"Would you like me to look?" Vision offered. "I can check the internet and satellite feeds for any traces of his whereabouts."

"No, it's fine," Steve said, looking at him with a sad smile. "Bucky's not gonna be found till he wants to be. And besides," he pointed out, "you need to focus on your training."

Vision quirked a brow. "Which is what, exactly, at the moment?"

"At the moment?" Steve said, grinning as he took a step away, fluidly removing the shield from his back. His smile became less sad, more genuine. "Sparring with me."

"Fifty!" Sam called, letting go of the bar and collapsing down to the ground, breathing hard.

"Forty-something!" Rhodey called, still doing pull-ups, having started after the Falcon. "Forty-something-else!" Another pull-up. "Forty—aw, you know what?" he let go of the bar, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants. "Let's just assume that I've done fifty. I mean, it's not like anybody else was counting."

"You only did forty-nine, man," Sam said with a grin.

"Shut up," Rhodey said in annoyance as he sat down next to the other man to watch the two sparring pairs.

"Sam! Rhodes!" Steve called, even as he blocked an attack from the Vision. "Get off your rears and start sparring with each other! There's no time to be lazy!"

"Did Cap just tell us to get off our asses?" Rhodey asked, turning to look at Sam with a raised brow.

"Language!" Sam chastised with a laugh.

"That was an order!" Steve barked at them.

Chuckling, both men stood up.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Sam asked.

"That we go get our suits and take our sparring session outside?" Rhodey said.

Sam grinned. "Yeah."

"Yeah," Rhodey nodded, and both men turned and left the room, joking as they went.

Wanda was not actively listening to the conversations of the others, but subconsciously she was reading them. She knew that Captain America understood her loss. She knew that Vision was concerned. She knew that Falcon and War Machine did not mind the Avenger training as much as the amount they complained would suggest. She knew that they were both looking forward just now to taking to the sky. She knew that Captain American enjoyed sparring with Vision because he didn't have to pull his punches. She knew that Vision considered sparring with Captain America to be a satisfying challenge. She knew that Black Widow felt triumph as she knocked Wanda to the ground again, this time making sure to hold her hands down so she couldn't work her magic.

They were both breathing hard.

"You're done for the day," the Black Widow said, getting off her and standing up, turning away. "Take a break."

"A break to do what?" Wanda said as she stood up, feeling irritated. She was tired, yes, and probably wouldn't last more than a minute against the Black Widow were they to spar again, but she did not want to take a break.

Breaks meant doing nothing. Doing nothing meant thinking. Thinking meant missing Pietro. Missing Pietro meant aching till she went numb. Going numb meant feeling cold. Feeling cold reminded her huddling in the dark underneath a bed, holding onto her brother and praying they wouldn't die. Feeling cold reminded her of huddling against the wall of a cell while Pietro leaned against the other time, wishing she could hold him. Feeling cold reminded her of what it felt like to die. Feeling cold reminded her that she wasn't alive. Realizing that she wasn't alive made her think about why she was dead. Which meant would be thinking about Pietro again.

She didn't want to think about Pietro right then. It hurt. She was always thinking about Pietro. She always hurt.

"To relax," the Black Widow shrugged. "Go grab some popcorn and return to watch Steve and Vision beat each other up. Or take it outside to watch Sam and Rhodes do their aerial acrobatics."

Wanda frowned slightly. "I do not like popcorn."

"Then don't grab popcorn," the Black Widow said. Her face was expressionless, but Wanda could feel that she was amused and slightly exasperated. "Eat something else."

"Your American food is strange," Wanda said flatly.

"Then don't eat American food," the Black Widow said coolly, but she empathized. "You could try Indian food. Italian. Thai. Chinese. Japanese. Mexican."

"I'll consider it," Wanda said, feeling suddenly exhausted. She turned and left the room.

She found an apple in the kitchen, climbed up to the roof of the building, sat there with the smooth apple in her hands as she watched Falcon and War Machine swoop through the air high above her.

After a while, craning her neck back like that hurt, so she looked down at the scarlet apple in her hands, tracing her fingers over the vibrant skin, before lifting it up to take a bite. It was strangely flavorless.

She felt the Vision's mind before she heard his footsteps.

He sat down next to her, crossing his legs. He watched Falcon and War Machine for a few minutes.

Wanda stared down at the apple in her hands, with the single bite taken from it, the inside flesh of the apple strangely pale in comparison with the deep red skin.

Vision's mind was a golden with deep thought. His very nature was so good, so pure. There was not a malign bone in his synthetic body, not an angry or bitter thought in his A.I. mind.

So different from Ultron.

They sat in silence for a while. It was comfortable, mostly. As comfortable as one could be while sitting next to someone who was concerned for you and wanted to help but didn't know how to. Someone who did not understand the concept of loss. Someone who thought that everyone and everything had beauty.

He thought she was beautiful.

Many people did—she was used to those kinds of thoughts. But Vision was different from most. He did not lust after her beauty. He did not look at her and think about fucking her. He looked at her like one might look at a beautiful sunrise, with reverence and awe.

He looked at her a lot like Pietro had, with a certain softness, except that while Pietro's love for her was purely platonic and brotherly, Vision couldn't help but wonder what her lips might feel like against his own, if she were to kiss him.

If _she_ were to kiss _him,_ not if _he_ were to kiss _her._ He never thought about anything beyond a small, simple kiss. It was kind of adorable, if she were to be honest, if she were not so frustrated with the fact that he did not understand what Pietro's death had done to her.

"Wanda..." he started finally, looking over at her, wanting to say something even if he still didn't know what to say.

She looked up from the apple in her hands to look at him. "You're afraid," she said, tilting her head.

"Am I?" he asked, seeming more surprised than anything.

"You are afraid because you are not human," she said. "You worry that because your body is synthezoid and your mind is artificial intelligence that it makes you artificial. You think that maybe your emotions are not real, that maybe you are not alive. You do not need to eat, to drink, to sleep. You feel human, but you're afraid that you are not, that you can never be."

She stood up. "Trust me," she told him, glancing out at the sky, blue and cloudless, the figures of Falcon and War Machine silhouetted against it, swooping and diving like ravens. "You can be alive without being human, and you can be human without being alive." She glanced down at him, as he was still sitting there, looking at her curiously.

"And trust me," she said again, tossing him the scarlet apple with the single pale bite take out of it. Her hazel eyes met his blue ones.

His eyes were the only things that looked truly alive in his face. Truly human.

She couldn't help the curl of her lip into a slight sneer. "You do not want to be human."

She turned to leave.

"Wanda," he said, almost beseeching.

She kept walking. She could hear him following after her, almost urgently, feeling like he'd just figured something out.

"What is it?" she snapped, whirling around to glare at him.

He stopped, eyes widening. "Do you..." he started, looking at her, almost unsure, almost hopeful. "Do you want a hug?"

She just stared at him.

"I believe it is a normal demonstration of affection," he said quickly. "I read some articles about how hugs help increase positive emotions in the brain—"

She threw herself into his arms, clutching him tightly, beginning to sob, and he quickly stopped talking, putting his arms around her and holding her close, tight enough to let her know that he was there and he cared, but loose enough that she knew she could break away from the embrace any moment she wanted to.

God, she missed Pietro. She missed him so much it _hurt._ Every moment of every second of every day. His absence was a cold, Pietro-shaped hole in her chest, cold as Death and dark as her HYDRA cell when the light was off.

Vision did not hug her like Pietro did. Vision's arms and chest did not feel like Pietro's. Vision did not smell like Pietro.

Pietro was gone. But Vision—Vision was here. He did not try to talk. Didn't say anything. Just held her, hugged her, the only person who had hugged her after Pietro's death. The only person aside from Pietro that she'd hugged since their parents had died.

She was probably the only person he'd ever hugged, ever, in his short life.

Wanda sobbed, tears rolling off Vision's synthezoid outfit. She sobbed, grossly, loudly, uncontrollably, but Vision did not try to shush her. He just held her, starting, very softly, to rub comforting circles into her back.

" _I miss him,"_ she gasped out, burying her head in Vision's shoulder. _"I miss him."_

Vision didn't say anything, but he felt compassion for her. She wished she could turn off her powers for a moment. Wished she wasn't always reading everyone around her without thinking about it.

Wished Pietro was still here to drown out the edge of all those minds with his blurring, blue, lightning-fast thoughts.

She thought maybe Vision's mind would be a safe place to retreat to.

With a rough shove, she pushed away from the synthezoid, rubbing at her watering eyes. Her face was no doubt red and blotchy by now, her eyes no doubt red-rimmed and puffy.

He felt confused.

"Just so you know," she muttered, face hidden by her hands, voice muffled. "Your emotions _are_ real."

"Wanda—" Vision started, reaching out a hand.

"I'vegottogo," she said quickly, turning and running back across the roof, throwing open the door that led back inside and slamming it behind her, hurrying down the stairs, sprinting through the halls until she came to her assigned room, throwing herself inside and locking the door behind her.

With another violent sob she slid down the door, leaning back against it as she hugged her legs to her chest, burying her face in her knees, long brown hair hiding her face and tickling her arms, like curtains concealing her.

She cried until she ran out of tears. Sobbed until her body gave out and she slid down the door to curl up on the floor.

Her heart bled until she went numb. Cold, empty, and dead.

Pietro was gone.

There was a soft knock on the door. "Wanda?" came Vision's voice.

She ignored it. Just lay there curled up on the floor. He couldn't open the door if he wanted to. It was locked, and she was blocking it.

"Wanda? Are you alright?"

No, she wasn't alright. No, she wasn't going to answer. No, she didn't care how worried the Vision was. No, she wasn't even awake. She was practically asleep. She could feel the cool fingers of sleep finger-painting black on the inside of her skull. It was soft, warm. It didn't hurt. Dreamless sleep was the only time she didn't hurt.

"Wanda, my thermal sensor shows that you are lying on the floor. Don't you think the bed would be more comfortable?"

No, the floor was just fine, thank you very much. Perfectly comfortable.

"Wanda, your vitals show that you are on the verge of sleep. Are you sure you wouldn't rather sleep in your bed?"

No, no bed... she didn't have the energy... the floor right here was perfectly comfortable... the bed was too far away... so far away... might as well be as unattainable and nonexistent as Pietro...

"Wanda?"

...nothing but a memory...

...nothing...

* * *

There was a shimmer above her as Vision drifted through the door, having altered his body mass to intangibility.

Once on the other side, he made himself solid once again, bending down to gently pick up the sleeping Wanda.

With a smooth stride so as not to jostle and wake her, he crossed the room and set her carefully on her bed.

He looked down at her for a moment, taking in her beautiful features, her face calm and peaceful with sleep. He reached out a hand to brush a strand of long brown hair out of her voice, but then pulled his hand back.

A small, sad smile graced his features, then he turned around, altering his body mass so as not to cause any sounds or vibrations, glancing back at her once before drifting out of the room.

Steve was waiting on the other side of the door. "How is she?" he asked quietly.

"Sleeping," Vision said, just as quiet.

Steve nodded.

"But she... cried over him, today," Vision ventured hesitantly. "I think that might have been the first time she'd let herself cry and break down over it. That's a good thing, right?"

"I think so," Steve said, shrugging, giving a wry, humorless quirk of his lips. "At least she hasn't gotten to the stage of trying to drink away her sorrows, yet."

Vision raised an eyebrow. "Does that help?'

"Dunno," Steve said, shrugging again. "Couldn't get drunk. You could try asking Tony, though."

"I do not think I could get drunk, either," Vision remarked.

"Probably not," Steve agreed.

Vision glanced back at Wanda's door, frowning slightly. "Will she be okay?"

"She'll get better," Steve said. He looked down, nudging his booted foot against the floor. "Eventually. It takes a while."

"I wish I could do more to help her," Vision admitted, shoulders slumping slightly.

Steve put a hand on his shoulder, smiling slightly. "You can't rush the grieving process," he said. "Just be there for her."

Vision nodded. "I will."

"Good," Steve said, pulling back his hand, letting it rest by his side. "If you're not busy, I've got a task for you."

"I'm not busy," Vision said. "What task do you need me to do?"

"I think Rhodes and Sam got a little carried away with their aerial sparring," Steve said, chuckling almost fondly, shaking his head. "They've flown out of contact distance. I need you to go retrieve them."

Vision smiled. "It would be my pleasure."

* * *

Wanda woke up in her own bed.

She sat up, blinked, glanced around. Her heart still ached like a yawning void, but the tiniest trace of a smile flickered across her lips.

She stood up and carried on.

* * *

 **AN: *according to the Vision's Marvel wiki page**

 **I don't know why I enjoy writing grief so much ;-;**

 **This is the last sad chapter for a while. Next chapter we start with the fix-it scenarios!**


	4. AU III: Dead Man Walking

**Tags : Tragedy that is quickly remedied. ******Hurt/Comfort.** Fluff. I'm pretty sure there's some Humor in here. I tried. OOCness. Kind of ridiculous. Fix-it fic! Pietro doesn't stay dead! Happy ending! Death is a mixture between Lady Death from the Marvel Comics (the one Deadpool and Thanos are obsessed with) and Death from Terry Pratchett's Disc World. Because I felt like it. I thought the first fix-it chapter should be kinda silly for feels-remedying reasons.  
**

 **So yeah. Enjoy the chapter, and don't take it too seriously!**

* * *

 **AU III: Dead Man Walking (more like dead man running)**

 _Bullets through his left arm, his left thigh, through his chest. One managed to pierce straight through his heart._

 _Hawkeye was looking at him in shock and horror. Disbelief._

 _The sucker._

 _Pietro smirked. "You didn't see that coming."_

 _Fuck this hurt. Stupid bullets. Fucking Ultron._

 _Pietro could feel the blood draining from him, pain coursing through him._

 _No, this couldn't stop him. This wouldn't stop him. He was going to die, not from a few measly bullets! He was stronger than that. He would not fade away like—_

 _Dying was like getting struck by lightning._

 _One moment Pietro's nerves were searing in pain, his vision blurring, he could hear Wanda screaming, he was struggling to stay on his feet._

 _The next his muscles gave out, and then the pain was gone._

 _Just like that. Just—gone._

 _He was standing in the middle of black sand dunes. Glittering black sand dunes, like obsidian. The sky was dark and gray, like it was filled with rain-heavy clouds. Only, the air was completely dry, practically parched. And cold. The air was frigid, but the cold seemed to be a part of him, down to his bones, and it wasn't uncomfortable. His breath was not visible._

 _Actually, he wasn't even breathing._

 _Pietro looked down at himself to see his outfit completely unblemished. No bullet holes, no blood._

 _He glanced around._

 _Nothing but black sand dunes under a gray sky._

" _Is this what it's like to be dead?" Pietro asked with a scoff, crossing his arms as he looked around with narrowed eyes, unimpressed. "Well this is boring."_

 _He kicked at the black sand, which fluttered upwards, drifting down slowly, like dust on the moon._

 _But when Pietro took an experimental step, he was able to move as if in normal Earth gravity. It was like the black sand had its own rules._

 _Oh, he bet it would look cool if he ran across it._

 _He ran a quick mile, curving around in a circle, pausing to watch the spray of sand kick into the air and drift down slowly, glittering and settling like millions of teeny tiny black butterflies._

" _Alright," Pietro said, crossing his arms as he glared at his surroundings. "What was the protocol for this situation again? I'm sure Wanda would remember."_

 _Wanda._

 _Wanda, who was still alive._

 _Wanda, who was now a hole in his chest._

 _Pietro was frowning heavily know, but he could hear the echo of Captain America's words:_ "If you get hurt, hurt them back. If you die... walk it off."

" _Walk death off," Pietro snorted to himself. "Like this place could be escaped by_ walking."

* * *

Clint was kneeling next to Pietro's crumpled, dead body when Steve jogged over.

Clint's eyes were wide and watery, red around the edges, irritated. No tears fell.

There was a painful twinge in Steve's chest as he looked down at the young man with the white-streaked hair, the body riddle with bullets, clothes soaked with blood. The overturned car next to them was struck with bullets as well—the car that hadn't been there seconds ago.

When Clint looked up, his face was haunted. Drawn. Closed. Exhausted. The young boy was clinging to him, crying.

The kid had just narrowly missed death and witnessed someone die right in front of him.

"C'mon," Steve said with his Captain's voice, squatting down to pick up the white-haired youth's limp, dead body. "We need to go."

Clint nodded, picking up the crying kid, and they headed towards the transport carriers.

The white-haired youth—Pietro Maximoff. He'd died to save Clint and a child.

And somebody would have to tell Wanda that her twin, the only family, the only friend, that she'd had for years, was dead.

* * *

 _Pietro felt a presence of intense coldness behind him._

 _He whirled around, watching as Death materialized._

 _Death, as it turned out, looked a lot like Wanda—if Wanda was a skeleton who wore black instead of red, and whose eyes instead glowed blue._

" _You must be Death, I presume?" Pietro said, raising an eyebrow, shifting his weight, as always ready to bolt. "I'm dead, aren't I?"_

 _Skulls could do nothing but grin, yet he was pretty sure Death was frowning at him._

 _Death's voice was in his head, remaining unspoken aloud._

You're not dead.

" _I'm not?" Pietro asked, glancing around at the leagues and leagues of black glittering black sand dunes. "Then where am I, may I ask?"_

You're... _Death seemed to hesitate._ You're in the land in-between.

 _Pietro turned his gaze to her, tilting his head._

Only half of your soul is dead, _Death clarified._ Half of your soul is still alive.

" _Wanda," Pietro breathed, eyes widening._

Twins normally aren't linked in such a way, _Death said, sounding as confused as it was possible for an entity with a voice like tomb doors closing to sound._

" _Well," Pietro said. There was a tickle of red in the back of his mind."If you would kindly point me to the exit...? I have a twin sister who's worrying about me."_

 _Death pointed a bony finger, and Pietro started walking._

 _He didn't walk for very long before he started running._

 _The black sands all looked the same. He felt like he'd been running for years. Years and years and years and he wasn't getting anywhere. He could have been running in circles for all he knew, and he was starting to think that maybe he was, when he got onto the flicker of red again._

 _It danced behind his eyes like the aurora borealis._

" _Wanda?" he breathed._

" _Pietro?" her voice was faint but surprised, hopeful._

" _Wanda, where are you?" Pietro asked, running faster. Black sand was kicked up behind him in an oceanic spray. "I think I'm lost, Wanda."_

" _Follow my voice, Pietro."_

* * *

In Vision's arms, Wanda sat bolt upright, nearly hitting the top of her head against the Vision's chin.

" _Wanda?"_ came uncertain Pietro's voice again, in a tingle of blue.

" _Pietro,"_ she thought, smiling, her previously hollow chest constricting with hope. " _Follow my voice. Follow me home."_

" _Keep talking, Wanda. Please."_

* * *

 _Pietro closed his eyes to the dark, gloomy landscape, letting his instincts drive him towards Wanda's voice._

 _The black behind his eyelids grew brighter, until light filtered through his eyelids enough to turn his vision a warm red._

" _Wanda?" he thought._

" _You're almost there, Pietro. You're almost here."_

* * *

Clint was now carrying Pietro across the transport carrier, looking for a place to set the body down, looking for a place to rest.

That was when Pietro suddenly flailed in his arms, hazel eyes wide open and bright, locking onto Clint's startled gray ones.

"Why are you carrying me?" Pietro asked quizzically.

Clint shrieked (it was a very manly shriek) and dropped the speedster.

Who landed on his back with a groan, but there was a smirk on his lips as he sat up and raised his eyes to the archer's.

"You didn't see that coming, did you?" Pietro quipped, smug smirk stretching across his still-too-pale face.

Clint was gaping at him. "You—" the archer stammered, blinking, jaw working silently for a few moments. "You were _dead!"_ he exclaimed as he finally found his voice again. "Your heart wasn't beating, you had no pulse— _how do you have at least ten bullet holes in you and are just sitting there looking like you just woke up from a nap?"_

"You heard the Captain," Pietro shrugged, pushing himself to his feet with a groan, trying to hide a wince as his wounds tugged painfully. "Quote: 'If you die, walk it off,' unquote. Captain's orders."

Clint was still gaping at him, before he closed his mouth with a snap. "You little _bastard,"_ he said, eyes narrowed.

"Although, for the record, I'd have never made it back if I'd walked," Pietro said, face almost comically serious. "I had to break into a run."

Clint's gaze had shifted to his torso, taking on a concerned look. "Your wounds," the archer said.

Pietro glanced down at the bullet holes in his arm, chest, leg. They were still oozing blood, but they weren't gushing with it.

Pietro shrugged. "I'll just walk those off, too."

The transport carrier landed on the helicarrier, and the occupants started to rush off—but Pietro was the first off.

" _Pietro!"_

Pietro turned and almost fell—he _would_ have fallen, had Wanda not been there to catch him, embracing him and holding him up.

"Wanda," he whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to her temple. "I missed you. How long was I dead? It felt like _forever._ "

Wanda frowned slightly as she leaned back, brushing a strand of wind-bleached hair from his face. "Maybe 12 minutes. Why?"

Pietro's eyes widened. "12 minutes?!" he exclaimed, slightly panicky. "Does that mean that I lost the twelve minutes of life I had over you?!"

"Yes, yes you did," Wanda smirked, and Pietro groaned, letting his head fall forward to rest on her shoulder.

Just then, Clint jogged over, dragging Steve in tow.

"See?" Clint said, letting go of Steve to point almost accusingly at the white-haired youth hugging his sister. "See?! _I told you he was alive!"_

Steve was staring at the speedster, blinking, like he couldn't believe his eyes.

"You were dead," Steve stated flatly.

Pietro lifted the bottom of his shirt to show the bullet wounds that were now nothing but scars, looking up pointedly with a raised eyebrow.

Smiling softly, almost hauntedly, Wanda put a hand over one of the scars marring his abs, murmuring, "Strucker was right." She looked up to meet Pietro's hazel eyes with her own matching ones. "This really is the Age of Miracles."

She turned her gaze back to the Avengers. Hawkeye was shaking his head like he couldn't believe it, Steve was still just staring, equally dubious and astonished.

"We are _enhanced,"_ Wanda told them, a bit of bite in her tone.

Pietro was looking at the two Avengers, amused. "Captain America," he said, tilting his head, an eyebrow raising. "Why are you so surprised? You did tell us that if we died we should 'walk it off.' Correct? Or did I perhaps hear you wrong?"

"No..." Steve said. "That is what I said."

"And you didn't expect anyone to be able to follow those orders?" Wanda asked, her face mirroring her twin's amusement.

"No, I didn't," Steve admitted.

"Then why did you give orders you believed none of your soldiers would be able to follow?" Wanda inquired curiously, though the twinkle in her eyes was more mischievous than anything else. Pietro looked as if he was trying not to laugh.

"Snarky kids," Clint muttered under his breath, sounding almost fond.

Steve just shook his head slowly. "It wasn't meant to be taken literally." He stepped forward, holding out his hand to the speedster. "Thank you, Pietro, for saving Clint and the child."

Pietro shook his hand, then wrapped his arm back around his twin sister, giving a shrug. "It's what any Avenger would have done, no?"

Steve's lips curved upwards, before he cut straight to business: "I would like you to get a medical check-up, even if your wounds appear to have healed. But it's better to be safe than sorry. You should also get some food and water in you before you pass out."

Pietro scoffed. "I'm not going to—"

"That's an order, Avenger," Steve said authoritatively, setting his shoulders and looking down at the young man, eyes narrowing.

"Don't worry," Wanda said, rolling her hazel eyes. "I'll make sure he takes care of himself."

Steve nodded, before turning and striding away, seeming almost like he was fleeing an uncomfortable situation.

"And _that's_ Captain America," Pietro remarked quietly, an eyebrow twitching upwards.

"Not quite what all the rumors make him out to be," Wanda agreed.

"Hey, kid," Clint said, putting a hand on Pietro's shoulder, his face painfully earnest. "Thanks. And I-I'm glad you're alive."

Pietro looked at the hand on his shoulder, then up at Hawkeye, then over at his sister, almost seeming to ask her a silent question.

Smirking, Wanda wrapped her arms around her twin's waist, resting her head against his chest. "You _better_ be glad he's alive," she told Clint. "Otherwise you'd have to deal with me being..." she trailed off, her expression sobering, trying to think of the right word.

"Heartbroken?" Pietro offered with a teasing smile as he hugged her around the shoulders.

" _Upset,"_ she finished, glaring at him, but when he laughed, so did she.

Clint looked at them oddly.

They seemed... happy. Uncharacteristically cheerful. Not that he knew them that well, but they'd always seemed the very serious, angry types. He'd read their files—the death of their parents, trying to survive as orphans, the HYDRA experimentation. The kids hadn't lived happy lives.

Maybe dying and getting brought back to life, or having your twin die and then getting brought back to life, did that to people?

Yeah, that had to explain the giddiness. He knew that surviving near-death experiences could do that to people—the relief and joy at being alive.

As they teased and clung to each other, Clint watched, unable to help the smile the grew on his lips.

They were cute when they were happy.

He thought he'd like them to be happy like that more often.

 _Y'know what those kids need?_ Clint thought to himself. _Those kids need a home._

Maybe he could offer them one.

* * *

 **AN: Cuz Clint adopting them would be adorable. But pretty boring to write about, so I'm not gonna be writing something like that. But it's cute to think about.**

 **Yay sweet feels after all the angst of the previous chapters! At least, I _tried_ for sweet, lol. This chapter didn't write very well, and I'm not really happy with it, but eh. Chapters will get better and more interesting, I promise!  
**


	5. AU IV: I Might Be Crazy

**Tags : Angst. Hurt/Comfort. Humor. Pietro is a ghost. Wanda is the only one who can see and hear him. The other Avengers think she's gone insane with grief. Vision is special. This was super fun to write. And it's long hehe.  
**

* * *

 **AU IV: I Might Be Crazy (but you're still with me)**

 _Pietro woke up to searing pain in his chest, his arm, his leg. Groaning, he sat up, rubbing at his eyes with one hand, his arm twinging, while rubbing at the pain in his leg with the other. His chest and his arm he could deal with, it was his leg he was most worried about, because he needed his legs to run, and if anything had happened to his leg—_

 _He ran his hand over his hard muscles of his leg till he reached the point of pain—_

 _And his finger fell through._

 _'What?' he muttered, opening his bleary eyes to glance down at his leg, and—_

 _Oh. That was weird. That was... really weird._

 _He was sitting up, his legs bent, and there was a hole straight through his thigh—a hole of nothingness that went straight through. He could see his body beneath him—fuck that, he could see his body_ through _him._

 _'What the hell?!' he yelped, leaping up and whirling around, where his body was lying on a surgical table. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be quite dead, his clothes bloody, his body full of bullet holes in all the places he currently felt stabs of pain._

 _He glanced back down at himself—the current self he was in, because apparently he'd left his corporeal form behind, and now he was... what? A ghost?_

 _His body was transparent and blue and his edges were blurry, like maybe he was glowing slightly. Where every bullethole should be, there was simply a hole, which hurt. When he poked at his leg or chest, he_ felt _corporeal enough, but he could stick a finger straight through any of the holes in himself, which didn't make the areas hurt any more than they already did, so he didn't seem to have any insides. The edges of the bulletholes were ragged, and as blurry as the outlines of the rest of him._

 _Bending over to look out the other side of the hole in his thigh, he saw Wanda there and he immediately straightened and turned, dashing over to her, saying excitedly, 'Wanda!'_

 _She was curled up in an uncomfortable-looking fold-up chair, asleep. Her long brown hair fell in cascades over her face, and instinctively he reached out to brush a strand behind her ear, only for his hand to go straight through._

 _Pietro reeled back for a moment, horrified. He couldn't touch Wanda—couldn't comfort her—he couldn't—would she even be able to see him?! Hear him?!_

 _Wanda stirred slightly, and Pietro waited with bated breath—wait, no, that was wrong—he wasn't breathing—he wasn't—he started counting. He never could hold his breath for very long after H.Y.D.R.A.'s experiments, his metabolism was now so fast that his cells needed all the oxygen they could get, and what felt like holding his breath for minutes for him was actually only seconds for everyone else, which he'd heard one scientist saying meant he could be quickly drowned if he couldn't get to the surface, and that had made Wanda bristle, but it's not like he'd even need to swim now since he was fast enough the he could run across the surface tension of water, which was pretty cool, if he did say so himself, and it wasn't like he could drown now since he seemed to already be dead, and why wasn't he freaking out more about that because he should probably be freaking out right about now and—_

 _Hey, he still hadn't needed to breath. He tried to draw breath, just to see if maybe not-breathing was a death thing, and his chest expanded, but he didn't actually feel any air enter him, and that was weird, it was breathing without really breathing, and looking down at himself he seemed to be just made entirely of air anyway, since—oh hey, he could walk right through the table and his own body, that was kind of creepy._

 _Okay, no, actually it was REALLY creepy, looking down at his own dead body, although why said dead body wasn't like bloated or something by now he had no idea, he looked to only be in the stiff stage—how long had he been dead anyway?_

" _Pietro?"_

 _He was immediately back at Wanda's side as she rubbed at her eyes, still curled up in that chair, and she blinked at him blearily, and she couldn't really stay there in that chair, her muscles would get cramped._

 _'Wanda,' he said softly, kneeling down next to the chair—only, one of his feet accidentally disappeared into the floor, and he quickly yanked it up, trying not to freak out—this intangibility thing would need some getting used to, but at least he wouldn't have to bother opening doors anymore, which was nice, doors had always been frustrating, and it was also a good thing because he would be able to open a door now even if he wanted to, since he wouldn't be able to turn the handle because, well, ghost. Or something._

 _He made a mental note to freak out about that later. Right now, Wanda was more important (Wanda was always the most important.)_

 _'Can you hear me?' he asked her, brow furrowing, and he could swear he could feel the muscles in his face move, even though he really didn't have muscles or any other body functions now, did he? He was just a form._

" _Of course I can hear you," Wanda said, yawning, trying to pry her eyes open, but they kept sliding shut. "Why wouldn't I be able to hear you?"_

 _Because I'm dead and I think I might be a ghost, he thought, but he just said, 'Just checking. Sometimes you don't hear me when you're half-asleep, you know. Remember that time when you didn't hear me telling you to wake up and you startled when I shook your shoulder and you ended up shattering half the lights in the H.Y.D.R.A base?'_

 _That brought a small smile to Wanda's lips. "Strucker wasn't happy about that," she murmured._

 _'No, he wasn't,' he agreed, grinning wryly. 'And then I had to run around and replace all the bulbs while bored agents tried to shoot at me.'_

 _Wanda giggled, reaching out for his hand, her eyes still closed._

 _Pietro automatically grabbed her hand—or at least, he tried to, but his hand went right through hers, and she shivered as if she'd just felt a gust of cold wind. He frowned._

" _They never could hit you," she said softly as she brought her hand back to her chest, turning to look at him with eyes that were now wide awake. "Until now."_

 _Pietro shrugged. 'The bullets hit my body, sure, but they couldn't catch my soul.'_

 _Wanda beamed at him, her smile lighting up the dim room, and Pietro grinned back._

" _You're not dead," she said, hazel eyes wide with wonder._

 _'Only the flesh part,' Pietro said, jerking a thumb back at where his body was still lying on the table._

" _You're really here," she murmured, her eyes pouring over his ghostly self, flicking back up to meet his gaze. "I can read you."_

 _He smiled at the familiar scarlet warmth he felt behind his eyes, though he couldn't help but quip, 'You're sure this isn't a dream, sister? Because I'm not so sure how real this is myself.'_

" _This is real, believe me," Wanda said, unfolding from her curled position and reaching a hand towards him._

 _'Then I believe you,' Pietro said immediately._

 _Wanda's hand passed through his chest._

 _Pietro squirmed. 'That tickles!' he protested, jerking away, giggling. Yes, honest to God giggles—he couldn't remember the last time he'd done something like_ giggle. _But it REALLY tickled, like the sensation of someone playing with the hair at the back of your neck._

" _Does it really?" Wanda asked, a mischievous grin growing on her lips, lighting up her hazel eyes._

 _'No!' Pietro said immediately, eyes wide as he held up his hands and back away. 'No tickling!'_

 _He backed through the table, looking down to see himself standing in his dead body again. 'This is really weird, sister,' he admitted softly even as he was suddenly at her side again. The superspeed hadn't left him even in death, apparently._

" _Yeah," Wanda agreed, glancing at his dead, bullet-riddled body lying on the table, hazel eyes still open and staring flat, dull, dead, into nothing._

 _'Can we leave?' Pietro asked, trying to reach out and grab her shoulder, only for his ghostly blue hand to pass straight through again._

 _Wanda shivered, goosebumps spreading down her arms—though whether this was because of the winter-breeze touch of Pietro's intangible hand, or at the fact that she was talking with her brother's ghost while in a room with his dead body, it wasn't clear. "Yeah," she said, getting to her feet, her head spinning slightly from how quickly she'd stood up. Her face looked slightly green as she stumbled towards the door._

 _In a streak of blue, Pietro was gone._

* * *

Wanda hurriedly threw open the door and stepoed out of the room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it, taking deep breaths, eyes wide, as the euphoria of still having Pietro around faded and she realized the exact... situation. What it _meant._

Her twin brother was dead. His body was in the room, stiff and cold.

And yet, her brother's soul and mind still lived, now in the form of a ghost.

Wanda felt vaguely nauseous, and then Pietro, blue and intangible, was beside her again, hovering, concern on his features.

'If you feel you are going to be sick, the Ladies' Room is down the hall and sixteen doors down on the right,' Pietro offered, sounding as concerned as he looked. 'If you are going to be immediately sick, you probably won't make it in time, but if you only feel like you might be sick in a few minutes then you should be able to make it.'

She glanced up at him through curtains of brown hair, eyes tracing over his face as he stepped silently closer. He seemed taller. Looking down, she saw that his feet weren't touching the floor, hovering an inch or two above the floor, which helped give him even more of a height advantage. No fair.

He reached out a hand to her, stopping bare centimeters above her shoulder, lips pursing and brow crinkling in that way that meant he was troubled. She could feel the doubt, fear, worry, in his mind, and beneath that a glowing happiness that even though he was dead, he was still with her.

And below that was fear that somehow, still, he would lose her, that there had been a mistake and Death would be coming later to take his soul, to take him away from her.

'I'd run you there, but...' he said, so apologetic. His hand still hovered above her shoulder.

He wanted to comfort her.

She met his gaze, giving him a sad smile. "I'll be fine," she said sincerely, putting a hand just above his incorporeal one. "We'll be fine."

He gave her a timid smile back.

"We're survivors," she insisted, hazel gaze steady, holding his own. She could feel him on the verge of freaking out.

He needed her to be steady for him. Needed her to be grounded.

He was dead, and he needed her to be strong.

"We can work with this," she said.

'How?' he breathed. He stood back, anger flaring, waving his hands around wildly. 'I'm _dead,_ sister! How in hell do we work with _this?!'_

"You're still here," she pointed out, taking a step towards him, reaching out to calm his mind. "You may not be alive, but you're _still here._ We're still _together."_

Tucking her arms into her chest, she tried desperately to blink back her tears. She had to be stronger. For herself. For her brother. "Remember what you told me, after..." she took a deep breath, "after our parents died, and after we were rescued from the rubble? After we knew Stark wouldn't kill us?"

And then Pietro was there, reflexively wrapping his ghostly arms around, and she leaned into his incorporeal form as much as she could.

The air where he was was heavier, colder, and smelled slightly of spring wind.

'We're Maximoffs,' Pietro remembered. 'And all we need is each other.'

He embraced her carefully, making sure to keep his limbs from passing through hers, and she smiled, tucking her head in the pocket of warmer air between chin and clavicle.

"We'll be fine," she said again, not quite sure which one of them she was trying to convince.

'We will,' Pietro agreed, conviction returned to his voice, and he stepped away, offering her his I'm-older-than-you-and-I-have-important-wisdom-to-share-with-you-so-you-better-listen smile. 'And we shall start by getting you somewhere where you can sleep in an actual _bed._ It is, after all, still the middle of the night,' he gestured around the dimly lit, deserted hallway of the Helicarrier, 'and you just finished saving the world, you know.'

" _We_ just finished saving the world," Wanda corrected immediately.

Pietro's lips quirked. 'Yes, but I'm pretty sure the dead don't need to sleep,' he pointed out. 'I'll be right back.'

A blur of blue away, and Wanda barely had time to register that she was standing alone in a rather eerily abandoned medical corridor of S.H.I.E.L.D's helicarrier, before Pietro was back, pointing down the hallway.

'Apparently all the civilians were unloaded sometime while I hadn't yet woken up,' Pietro said, 'how long was I out, anyway? Nevermind—there are a few open bunks, and spare blankets and pillows. I'd personally suggest the bunk across from Hawkeye, he seems the most trustworthy. Followed by Captain America, who also seems to be trying to catch some shuteye, and he's sleeping on the bunk below the bunk Tony Stark is sleeping on, so I'm not worried about Stark. Not to mention that Stark isn't much without his armor or weapons.

'The Hulk and his alter-ego are missing, the Black Widow isn't sleeping, she's in another wing of the ship and she didn't look like she was in a good mood. And I'm not comfortable with Thor or the android, and neither of them are currently sleeping either, they're actually on the landing pad or whatever looking up at the sky and talking. So I'd say the bunks are a pretty safe place at the moment.'

Wanda smiled at him. "Lead the way, little brother."

 _'Hey!'_ Pietro protested indignantly, looking affronted. 'I'm _fifteen_ minutes older!'

"Not anymore," Wanda pointed out softly, lips quirking, far more more sad than smug.

Pietro glanced down at his incorporeal, ghostly blue form, before looking back up to meet her gaze, pursing his lips. He deliberated for a moment over how to respond to that comment. A second later he merely decided: 'That is not fair,' and Wanda couldn't help but giggle, though it was more hysterical than amused.

* * *

Wanda was very good at moving quietly.

Clint was a light sleeper—it came with the job. But he didn't hear Wanda come in and sit down on the bottom bed of the empty bunk across from him until she started talking quietly.

"But I don't want to go to sleep, Pietro," she whispered, as Clint cracked his eyes open and rolled closer to the edge of the top bunk he was sleeping on just enough to see her sitting there, staring at a space in the air in front of her, biting her lip. "I'm afraid."

There was a pause as she seemed to be listening for something.

"No, I'm afraid that if I go to sleep, when I wake up..." she reached a hand out, clasping it around nothing. "I'm afraid you won't be here, 'Tro."

Another pause, and then she smiled slightly. She scooted over on the bed, turning to look at the empty space beside her.

Oooooookay then, Clint thought. So apparently grief had turned Wanda crazy, and she was, what, hallucinating that Pietro was still here?

Something like guilt twisted hard in Clint's gut. He'd read the files—the Maximoff twins had been through a lot. Their parents had been killed by a missile right in front of them when they were only ten, they'd grown up in a war zone, they'd been experimented on by H.Y.D.R.A and they'd _volunteered_ in order to help protect their war-torn country, and for the last decade they'd had absolutely nobody save for each other.

They'd been through too much, for how young they were. According to the file, they had just recently turned twenty. Not even old enough to drink, and yet they'd just helped save the world.

And Pietro had died saving him and a little kid. And now Wanda was crazy and hallucinating with grief.

He knew it had been a bad idea to leave her alone with the dead body of her brother. But it wasn't like he, or anyone else, had been able to convince her to move, and with her powers, _nobody_ wanted to try and force her.

But now, here she was, having left her brother's dead body of her own free will and now sitting on the bunk across from him and whispering to the air as if her dead brother was there and still alive.

She was watching the space next to her, as if expecting her brother to sit down and put his arm around her, and then she burst out laughing.

It was a loud, happy laugh, and it shocked Clint into a sitting position, causing him to almost hit his head on the low ceiling.

The sound woke Steve up, too, and he was now sitting on the edge the lower bunk he'd been snoozing on, looking across the room at Wanda, who was laughing so hard she was crying and clutching her stomach, his eyes wide with alarm and surprise.

Tony Stark, who was neither a soldier nor a spy and trained assassin, just rolled over and waved a limp arm, muttering, "Five more minutes, Pepper."

"Wanda?" Steve asked cautiously, standing up and approaching the witch slowly. "Are you alright?"

When he sat down next to her, Wanda laughed so hard she fell right off the bunk, sprawling on her back on the floor as she giggled uncontrollably, long dark hair splayed around her face.

In a smooth motion Clint had vaulted over the edge of the bunk (yes, the bunks had railings as if for children—probably to keep the sleeping S.H.I.E.L.D agents from rolling off during sharp turns or turbulent winds) and landed in a crouch on the floor, quickly making his way over to Wanda and kneeling next to her.

"What's going on?" he asked her.

Wanda looked at him through eyes scrunched and crinkled with mirth, opening her mouth to say something, but laughter took over her again and she could only clutch her stomach and shake her head.

Clint glanced over at Steve, who was now kneeling on Wanda's other side, and the two went each other concerned looks.

"Was' going on?" Tony mumbled from his top bunk, lifting up a bleary head to look down at them.

When he saw the Maximoff girl lying there, he immediately sat up, suddenly looking much more awake and incredibly alarmed. "When did she get here?! What happened?!"

"We don't know," Steve said, his voice calm, but his face betrayed that he had absolutely no control of the situation and had no idea what to do, sending an almost pleading glance at Clint.

"You're the one who lost a best bud," Clint pointed out. "Did anythin' like this ever happen t'you?"

Steve slowly shook his head, looking at Wanda in bafflement and apprehension.

Okay, so apparently Steve was great at motivational speeches, but kinda sucked at emotional support.

Clint sighed. Guess it was up to him. He made a mental note to inform Steve later that he should never have kids, and reached down to gently grab Wanda's arm, pulling her up into a sitting position and tugging her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her as she laughed and sobbed against him.

Hugs usually helped calm kids down, after they were done with the angry, kicking and screaming phase. Hugs made people feel warm and safe.

"It's okay," Clint said, stroking her hair, "it's okay to break down."

Steve was giving him a thoughtful look, and he could feel Tony gaping at the back of his head, but he didn't really care at the moment.

This girl had lost her twin brother mere hours ago. Her twin brother who she'd been with since birth.

And Clint couldn't help but blame himself for the kid's death.

Wanda's loud sobbing and laughing stopped, and she looked up—not at Clint, at a spot slightly to the left of and behind his head.

"It's okay," Wanda whispered, and Clint couldn't really tell if she was talking to him or not. "It's okay, I got this. You thought he was worth saving, didn't you? He's a good person."

"I wish I could have saved him," Clint whispered, looking away from her gaze that wasn't looking at him.

"It's okay," Wanda said, not to him, and then her gaze was on his face, and she said softer, "I know."

And then she gently extricated herself from his embrace, standing up and smoothing down her skirt that was still covered in dust from the battle. "I'm fine," she insisted, as the three older Avengers looked at her with confused expressions, and she smiled slightly, staring at a spot in the air by a leg of the bunk. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"Um," Tony raised his hand, "am I the only one who's really confused and kind of disturbed right now? Except that I know that I'm not, because I'm a genius, and if I can't figure out what's going on, then you two jocks down there are definitely confused as well."

Wanda looked up at him, tilting her head, her hazel eyes glowing scarlet for a moment.

"No," she said, turning to the air beside her, "he actually didn't know that his weapons were being sold in Eastern European countries, or being used in Sokovia. There was a man named Obadiah, who was dealing under the table. It was Stark's technology, but it wasn't Stark. Obadiah's dead now, by the way."

They were all gaping at her.

She paused for a moment. "Stark has changed very much," she said. Another pause, and then she scoffed. "Because I can _read_ him, genius."

"Did you seriously just read my mind?!" Tony demanded, his voice higher pitched than usual.

She glanced up at where he was still sitting on the upper bunk bed. "You're forgiven, by the way," she told him, before looking to her left and narrowing her eyes. "Yes, he is. There's no revenge to be had, Pietro. The man whose fault it is our parents are dead is also dead. We need to let go."

"Um," Clint looked at her, then glanced between the disturbed faces of Steve and Tony, before looking back at Wanda. "You do know that Pietro's dead, right?" he said, softly, gently.

She met his gaze, her lips twisting into a smirk. "He may be dead," she said evenly, "but that doesn't mean he's _gone."_

The Avengers stared at each other.

"I think I need a drink," Tony declared, climbing down from the bunk bed.

"No," Steve said firmly, standing and crossing his arms, narrowing his eyes at the billionaire.

"No, really," Tony said, matching his glare with one of his own, "I need a drink. I'm tired, sore, and feeling awful from the fact that we just narrowly managed to defeat an artificial intelligence that _I created,_ and I was so exhausted earlier than I managed to skip the drink and fall straight asleep, but now I'm awake and I don't think I'll be falling _back_ asleep, and _did I mention that we were just fighting a bunch of robots in a flying city and we all nearly went extinct and I essentially killed this girl's parents and her brother as well?!"_ Tony's voice had risen and he was gesticulating with his arms now, his dark eyes slightly wild. _"I think now is the perfect time for a drink and you're just jealous that you can't get drunk!"_

Steve grit his teeth as Tony stormed out of the room.

Wanda stared after him, head tilted to the side, eerily calm.

"Y'know, alcohol sounds great right now," Clint agreed, before glancing over at Wanda, raising an eyebrow. "Wanna come?"

"She's underage!" Steve hissed, taken aback.

"She just helped us save the world," Clint pointed out, tone clipped, sending Steve a look. "I think she's old enough to drink a little." He lowered his voice. "Helps take the edge off grief, y'know?"

Steve's shoulders sagged and he looked down.

"Hey," Clint said, patting Steve on the shoulder and trying to sound cheerful (he was pretty sure it didn't work), "maybe Thor has some more of that Asgardian stuff to share with you!"

Wanda was watching them with something that looked like amusement. Her mannerism was such an uncanny change from her earlier misery and depression, and it set Clint's teeth on edge. Hell, _he_ was miserable and depressed over Pietro's death, and he'd hardly _known_ the guy!

Wanda's twin brother had died only hours ago and she... she shouldn't be this genuinely _happy._ Not that he was against her being happy—but _this soon_ after Pietro's death? It was just fucking _creepy._

Wanda was looking at him now, with amusement bordering on sympathy, and it was _really_ freaking it out. Not that he'd ever admit it or show it or anything, but—

And she was smiling sadly at him now, what the hell?

Oh right, mind-reader— _fuck!_

"Yes, I think a drink would smooth down all our frayed nerves," Wanda said in that Sokovian accent, and then she grabbed both his and Steve's hands and pulled them into the hall.

* * *

Once they'd reached the Avengers' sleeping quarters—all the S.H.I.E.L.D agents slept in rooms lined with bunk beds attached to the walls, and the Avengers got no different, though they did get their own separate room from the other agents—Pietro had been trying to convince her to go to sleep, but she didn't want to.

If she went to sleep, she was afraid Pietro wouldn't be there when she woke up.

'Of course I'll be here,' he'd chided gently. 'You know I'll always be here for you. As long as you need me.'

She just looked at him, biting at her lip.

'I'll stay,' he said.

Smiling, she scooted over to make room for him, and he tried to sit down next to her.

Key word there being: _tried._

Because when he tried to sit down, instead of lowering his butt down to sit on the bed, his legs ended up tucking upwards, so that he was sitting a few feet up in the air, his head remaining at the same place as when he was standing.

The incredibly confused look on his face made her giggle.

'What in the hell?' he grumbled, stretching out his legs again, and he tried to grab the bunk bed to help lower himself down, only his hand went right through.

Some flailing was involved, and somehow he ended up upside down, so he was doing a headstand in the air, his arms crossed over his chest as he glared at her when she laughed outright.

'This is not funny!' he protested.

But it was, it really was, and she couldn't stop laughing as he tried to figure out how to turn himself upright again, flailing his arms and legs around and ending up doing something like cartwheels in the air.

'Dammit!' he yelped. 'Wanda, make it stop!'

Wanda laughed even harder—she couldn't help it, and Pietro couldn't help the fact that he was grinning, and she was starting to suspect at this point that he was doing some of the ridiculous flailing on purpose to make her laugh. But she wasn't complaining.

Though apparently her laughter had woken up all the Avengers, and Hawkeye was sitting up on the top bunk across from her looking down at her with wide eyes, and Captain America was sitting up on the bottom bunk and bed over, looking at her with concern and asking if she was alright.

There was no way she could possibly answer, she was laughing so hard.

Finally, Pietro managed to somehow roll into a lying-down position parallel to the floor, and from there he sat up, and then extended his legs, and then he walked closer to the bunk and managed to sit down, though he was sitting a couple inches above the bed.

His face was twisted in annoyance, though his lips were quirking upwards at her laughter. 'It's really not that funny—' he started, only, just then, Captain America crossed over and sat down on the bed right where Pietro was, sitting down _through_ him, and Pietro yelped indignantly, jumping to his feet away from the bed.

'I was sitting there, you geriatric!' Pietro yelled at Captain America, who could neither see nor hear him and was looking with concern at Wanda. 'You can't just sit on a guy without asking permission! And I thought Captain America was supposed to have _manners!'_

Tears of mirth were streaming down Wanda's face as she laughed so hard she fell right off the bed onto the floor.

Tony Stark was awake and sitting up as well, now, and Hawkeye and Captain America were kneeling next to her, but she couldn't barely see through the tears and the huge grin that was causing her eyes to squint, and she could barely make out what they were saying over her laughter and Pietro insisting that she stop laughing from where he kept trying to push Hawkeye over to no avail.

God, _when was the last time she'd laughed like this?_ She honestly couldn't remember.

Her brother's eyes were shining at her mirth, and he was definitely enjoying this, now, insisting, 'Stop laughing, Wanda! You're making the Avengers think you're crazy!' which of course just made her laugh even more.

She could read the confusion-apprehension-worry-fear coursing through their minds at her laughter and tears, their thoughts that grief had driven her insane.

Stark was confused and he really hated it. He felt awful. He blamed himself for Ultron, and since Ultron had killed Pietro, he blamed himself for Pietro's death, and since he figured it was Pietro's death that had driven her over the edge, he blamed himself for her hysterics. He thought she was more sobbing than laughing.

Captain America felt helpless and he really hated it. He felt awful. He'd seen many young men die in battle, but it never got any easier. They all had families, lovers, loved ones who would miss them, they all had futures that were stolen from them. He was familiar with death, but that never made the death of those around him any easier. He regretted every life he wasn't able to save.

Hawkeye felt exasperated as he realized that he was the only dad on the entire team, and everyone else apparently lacked paternal instincts, as he gently pulled her into a sitting position and hugged her.

"It's okay, it's okay to break down," he told her, and she felt relief that that was what he told her, and that he didn't try to tell her the lie that everything would be okay.

Maybe she _was_ breaking down a little, now. What had started as laughter turning to sobs as she realized that Pietro's crazy antics were only because he was newly _dead_ and he was a _ghost_ and she _couldn't hug him._

So buried her head in Hawkeye's shoulder and let him hug her, and it was alright.

Pietro was freaking out.

He was protective of her, and didn't like anyone else touching her, always afraid that everyone and everything might bring her harm. He didn't want her to be hurt, and he couldn't do anything about it now that he was incorporeal. He couldn't hold her, couldn't comfort her, couldn't protect her, and he was freaking out.

"It's okay," she whispered, lifting her head to meet Pietro's panicked gaze, offering a reassuring smile. "It's okay, I got this. You thought he was worth saving, didn't you?" she pointed out, inclining her head slightly at Hawkeye. "He's a good person."

"I wish I could have saved him," Hawkeye whispered, looking away as he held her, and she figured that he needed this embrace probably more than she did. The guilt and sorrow was a dark, roiling mass inside him, and he didn't have the comfort of being able to see and hear Pietro, of knowing that Pietro was still here.

Pietro, standing behind Hawkeye, was gesturing wordlessly, unable to phrase his feelings into coherent sentences. He was freaking out. Somebody was touching her, and Pietro couldn't shake the panic and fear that he would hurt her, because nobody else had touched either of them for the past decade without some intention to harm.

"It's okay," Wanda told Pietro, reaching out to his mind to calm him. Turning her gaze to Hawkeye's emotionally pained face, she said softly, "I know."

She knows Hawkeye would have done anything within his power to save Pietro. But there had been nothing he could do. He hadn't even known what was going on till it had already happened.

Gently, she removed herself from the archer's embrace, standing up and smoothing down her skirt, realizing that she hadn't changed clothes since the battle, or showered, or cleaned up at all, and she was filthy. But other than that fact, "I'm fine," she said, looking up at them. The three Avengers watched her with intense bewilderment, while Pietro tried to climb up one of the bunk beds to sit on the top bunk, but he was intangible so it wasn't working, and he ended up standing in the leg of the bunk, arms crossed, lips pouting.

Wanda smiled at him softly, saying reassuringly, "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"Um," Tony said, raising his hand, "am I the only one who's really confused and kind of disturbed right now? Except that I know that I'm not, because I'm a genius, and if I can't figure out what's going on, then you two jocks down there are definitely confused as well."

Wanda looked up at him and tilted her head, reaching out to read his mind. She and her brother had questions that needed to be answered before they could agree to join the Avengers...

Images and feelings flashed through her mind, explosions, pain, betrayal—and Tony even seem to feel it.

She could always read the surface thoughts and emotions of those around her, but digging deeper had always been much harder, as she tried to use as little of her power as possible, afraid of the power roiling scarlet within her.

Pietro's death, though, had triggered something. Ripped her open. She had so much _power_ that she hadn't even realized that she'd had.

More power, more finesse, her fingers moving in the folds of her skirt, and Tony didn't even feel it.

 _'Did he...?!'_ Pietro demanded, hovering beside her, his thoughts a flurry of blue that couldn't straighten out enough to make it to his tongue.

"No," she said, turning her head to look at him, meeting his blue-hazel gaze, "he actually didn't know that his weapons were being sold in Eastern European countries, or being used in Sokovia. There was a man named Obadiah, who was dealing under the table. It was Stark's technology, but it wasn't Stark. Obadiah's dead now, by the way."

The Avengers were all gaping at her.

 _'But Stark built the weapons!'_ Pietro hissed, fists clenched at his sides, his ghostly body that was already blurred at the edges smearing even farther. 'He's a _warmonger!'_

"Stark has changed very much," she told him, making sure he saw in her gaze that she was sincere.

 _'How do you know?!'_ Pietro demanded furiously.

Wanda scoffed, rolling her eyes at him. "Because I can _read_ him, genius."

Pietro calmed down, his edges becoming more clear and defined as he sighed, stepping closer and resting his forehead on her shoulder, his shoulders lifting and dropping as he simulated taking a deep breath. _'If you say so...'_

"Did you seriously just read my mind?!" Stark demanded, horrified-afraid-disbelieving-panicking.

She glanced up at where he was still sitting on the upper bunk bed, saying, "You're forgiven, by the way.

'No, he's _not,'_ Pietro hissed, abruptly straightened up and glaring at her.

"Yes, he is," Wanda said firmly, narrowing her eyes at him. "There's no revenge to be had, Pietro. The man whose fault it is our parents are dead is also dead. We need to let go."

"Um," Hawkeye looked at her, glancing at Captain America and Tony Stark, who were equally as disturbed by her comment, before looking back at her. "You do know that Pietro's dead, right?" Hawkeye said gently, afraid she would get defensive and angry. He thought that she was in denial.

She wasn't. Pietro was dead, but he was still there. She said so.

The Avengers looked at each other, thinking that they had a case of insanity on their hands.

Captain America made a mental note to himself to get her to a therapist. Hawkeye felt crushing guilt. Stark's emotions started spirally out of control into the dark territory of self-loathing.

"I think I need a drink," he declared, climbing down from the bunk bed.

"No," Captain America said firmly, not agreeing that the early hours of the morning were the proper time for drinking.

"No, really," Stark said, matching his glare with one of his own, irritation flashing through his mind, along with a reminder to himself that this was the guy who was against swearing even during missions when swearing was definitely called for, so of course would be against drinking in the wee hours of the morning even if they'd only a few hours ago nearly failed at saving the world from a monster that _he_ had created.

Stark started rambling, ranting, his emotions spiraling down even further, and he couldn't look at her. Even though it wasn't his fault her parents or her brother had died, but he blamed himself for all the death and destruction his weapons had caused. He felt so much regret-remorse-self-hatred it was practically crippling.

She couldn't _not_ forgive him. He was trying to be better, he really was.

He perhaps still needed to get better at forgiving himself.

Stark's voice had risen and he was gesticulating with his arms now, his dark eyes slightly wild as he ranted, _"I think now is the perfect time for a drink and you're just jealous that you can't get drunk!"_

Unable to deal with all the crippling emotions, Stark stormed out of the room, thinking that he _needed_ liquor, he _needed_ to take the edge of this pain.

Captain America grit his teeth as he watched his friend go. He knew about Stark's alcoholic tendencies, and he did not approve. He understood why Tony wanted to drown out the pain with drunkenness, but alcohol was only a temporary fix. There were better ways to deal, he thought. Healthier.

And yes, Wanda reasoned, Stark had been right when he'd pointed out that Steve didn't understand because he couldn't get drunk, because he'd never actually _caused_ any deaths—he'd only ever been unable to prevent them, which was entirely different.

And underneath that, Stark felt a hysteria of worthlessness, knowing he could never be as _strong_ as _Captain America_ and being _really fucking sick and tired_ of having it _rubbed in his face_. He was just a _human,_ after all, he wasn't some _goddamn superhuman test-tube created being of fucking patriotic perfection_ that his dad had always wanted him to be.

Wanda stared after him, tilting her head.

"Y'know, alcohol sounds great right now," Hawkeye agreed, before glancing over at her, raising an questioning eyebrow, thinking that she could definitely use a little alcohol to take the edge of her misery as well. "Wanna come?" he offered, desperately wanting her to say Yes.

"She's underage!" Captain America hissed, taken aback in a way that was almost adorable.

"She just helped us save the world," Hawkeye pointed out, tone clipped, sending Steve a _look_ as he thought about how Steve really needed to knock off some of that righteous boyscout bullshit sometimes. "I think she's old enough to drink a little." He lowered his voice, for some reason seeming to think it would keep her from hearing. "Helps take the edge off grief, y'know?"

Steve's shoulders sagged and he looked down because yes, he did know. She saw flashes of snow a shard of a scream, a table in a bombed-out bar and the taste of liquor that hardly burned and didn't make the world the slightest bit fuzzier.

"Hey," Hawkeye said, patting Captain America on the shoulder and trying to sound cheerful, though it didn't really work, "maybe Thor has some more of that Asgardian stuff to share with you!"

Wanda watched them in amusement, aware of how her manner was freaking them out. Grief they understood; grief they could deal with. Her calm happiness? They had no idea how to deal with that, when they didn't realize that all she needed was Pietro and that he was _still there,_ standing next to her with a cold, ghostly hand hovering just above her shoulder.

She smiled sadly at Hawkeye. He felt so much mourning and guilt, and he didn't know that Pietro was still there. He never would.

He noticed her looking at him, confused-angry-afraid, and she felt his realization that she could read his mind and the subsequent horror-relief-dread-confusion-panic.

"Yes, I think a drink would smooth down all our frayed nerves," she said, and because at this point they would probably just stand there gaping at her after that comment, she grabbed their hands and pulled them into the hall, Pietro jogging backwards in front of her and complaining about how he wouldn't get to taste the alcohol and how it was so unfair that they would even try to deny her any because of her age because in America the legal drinking age was 21 when in Sokovia the legal drinking age was 18 and they'd never even gotten any then because they were at HYDRA and HYDRA didn't give them any alcohol and he'd wanted to get drunk at least once in his life even though he probably wouldn't have been able to anyway with his metabolism but then he'd gone and gotten killed before even getting to taste anything more than cheap vodka and Stark probably had really expensive alcohol and it was all incredibly unfair.

She offered him a sorrowful smile. "Yes, it is unfair."

* * *

 _Wanda said she was fine, and be believed her, he did, because they'd always comfort each other but the never lied to each other, ever, and if Wanda said she was okay, then she was okay, she was okay, and he knew she got slightly annoyed when he was always super protective of her, but she understood, she understood that he couldn't lose her, that he couldn't let her get hurt, because that hurt him more than anything, and he couldn't leave her, couldn't lose her, even in death._

 _Even in death he couldn't leave, and it didn't matter if he ended up in Heaven, it didn't matter, because without Wanda_ anywhere _would be Hell, it didn't matter, he couldn't stand to be without her, and he knew she felt the same but he also knew that she knew that he probably needed her more and that he needed to be needed._

 _And then there was the whole problem of trying to figure out how moving around as a ghost worked, since, finally, gravity had let him go._

 _But superspeed was all about how to use gravity and friction and now, without those tools, he was flailing—literally and figuratively—but he was a quick learner, he could do this, and maybe he'd try harder if his failed attempts didn't make Wanda laugh so much—she had a beautiful laugh, her crinkled the corners of her eyes and made the hazel orbs glitter, and he loved hearing her laugh and seeing her smile, it made his heart swell in his chest, and it had been too long, far too long, since she'd laughed and smiled like that._

 _And now she was sitting at a table with a glass of alcohol along with the other Avengers—the god and the android had come in, so now only the female assassin and the green giant were missing—and she was watching them as they conversed, that thoughtful look on her face that meant she was enjoying listening in on their thoughts and emotions, filing information away for later analysis and use as she sipped the no doubt expensive liquor, and all their voices were droning on and Pietro was bored._

 _Boredom was never a good thing, but if he had time where Wanda wasn't paying too much attention to him, he figured he should use it to try and figure out the whole ghost thing he had going on._

 _Figuring out how to maneuver would be nice, but he didn't want to leave Wanda alone in the room with all the Avengers, so he stayed behind Wanda's chair as he ran in circles, on the walls, on the ceiling and then he just stood there upside down, and it was cool to be able to view the world from that angle without feeling the blood rush to his head—an advantage to having no blood, definitely._

 _He still couldn't touch anything side from himself—he wondered, if he concentrated hard enough, if he could maybe make himself slightly corporeal._

 _Jogging over to his twin sister, he began trying to play with her hair._

 _She shivered slightly, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder, lips quirking wryly, knowingly, and then she turned back around so her attention was on the Avengers, and he continued trying to concentrate on his fingers as he attempted to brush them through strands of her long, dark hair._

 _He was thinking maybe he'd actually gotten a few strands to move slightly when Hawkeye suggested a drinking game to speed up their descent into drunkness._

 _Pietro tensed up, but when Wanda politely declined to play, with the Captain of America pointing out that she was still underage and so nobody was allowed to pressure her, and in fact, he would insist that she didn't participate, even if she hadn't insisted herself._

 _With the Avengers paying even more attention to their drinks, Wanda turned in her chair to look at him, her hazel eyes traveling over the holes in his ghostly form._

" _Do they hurt?" she asked, trailing a hand through his incorporeal torso where the bulletholes were._

 _Pietro shrugged. They did hurt, actually, which was weird, since he was dead, and figured he shouldn't be feeling anything. But the wounds still hurt like they did when he was shot, only the pain didn't mean anything now that he was dead since it didn't disrupt the ability of his body to move and function, since there was nothing there to actually move of function. He was just... what was he? Just consciousness?_

 _Pain was a signal to the body to take it easy because it was in danger and could potentially die, but he was already dead. So what was the point? Was it just his mind, then, making him think that he hurt even though there was nothing there to actually feel pain?_

 _'A little,' he admitted, even as he thought all this, but Wanda was looking at him in that way that meant she could read him and knew better._

 _She opened her mouth to say something, but Pietro interjected with, 'The android is looking at you.'_

 _Wanda turned her head to look at the bright red, green, and yellow android with the glowing yellow stone in its forehead._

 _'He's been watching you nearly the entire time,' Pietro said, clenching his fists next to his sides as he glared at the_ thing _that couldn't see or hear him._

 _Wanda hummed. "He's just worried about me," she told her twin, putting a hand where he'd laid an intangible hand on her shoulder. "They all are—or at least, they all_ were _before they got drunk. But Vision can't get drunk."_

 _'Vision?' Pietro asked, raising an eyebrow._

" _That's his name," Wanda said, nodding her head at the android, who was looking at her oddly with his strangely human blue eyes._

 _'How do you know?' Pietro asked, even though he knew how she knew. 'When did he get that name?'_

" _He decided on it earlier," Wanda shrugged, sending a smirk at the android who was apparently now called 'Vision,' which meant that she wanted to let him know that she knew what he was thinking and found it amusing, and she wanted to disturb him—Wanda was very good at disturbing people—she always was, but even more so after she got her powers._

 _Pietro would rather just punch people in the face._

 _'Why's he looking at you like that?' Pietro demanded, feeling agitated as he glared fiercely at the not-human_ thing _that was created partly from_ Ultron's _psyche._

" _He can hear me talking to you," Wanda said, glancing at her brother to share a secretive smirk. "He's also thinking that I'm hallucinating from grief, and maybe also the alcohol."_

 _Pietro snorted, running his incorporeal hand again and again through her hair, trying to will his fingers solid enough to actually move the strands. 'Shows what_ he _knows.'_

 _Lowering her voice slightly, Wanda said, in a voice meant only for him, "I like Vision, actually. He has a very pure mind. Not an iota of cruelty within him."_

 _Pietro took a step back, looking at her incredulously. 'He was built from_ Ultron!'

" _He is_ very _different from Ultron," Wanda told him seriously._

 _Pietro sighed, sitting down next to her as if there was a chair there, even though there wasn't, but there might as well have been. He could actually sit in the air, and his legs muscles didn't even have to work, because he didn't have muscles or a body anymore, and he didn't feel hungry, and he didn't feel thirsty, or really much else except for emotions and physical pain from the bullet wounds that he was becoming pretty damn sure he shouldn't be feeling._

 _'Okay, fine,' Pietro said, automatically reaching out to take her hand, still feeling surprised and slightly panicky that he wasn't able to. 'You know I trust your judgment.'_

 _Wanda smiled at him, and he tried to keep on a frown, but he couldn't help the corners of his lips from twitching upwards._

 _It was kind of weird, too, that he was able to remain so still—when he was alive, he could never quite stop moving, constantly feeling a restless, frenetic energy within him that he struggled to contain and then relished in letting free, but now that he was dead—_

 _Now that he was dead, he actually felt calmer. He didn't feel the need to run a few hundred laps around the helicarrier yet, as he no doubt would have if he'd been alive—but it was also no doubt that this was a good thing, since he was starting to think that, since he didn't have any true form, he wouldn't tire no matter how many laps he did, no matter how fast he ran them, no matter how hard he pushed himself._

 _'So,' he said, looking at his sister. 'What now?'_

 _She raised a dark eyebrow at him. "What now?"_

 _'I know you know what I mean!' he said, waving a hand around the table at the drinking and distracted Avengers and glaring at her slightly._

 _Her gaze followed his hand motion, scanning around the table, her expression thoughtful but resolute. "Yes, I think I want to join the Avengers," she said, glancing back at him, offering a small, nervous-excited smile._

 _'And what do you think?' he asked, nodding his head at them, brow raising._

" _I'll tell you later," she said, as both she and Pietro turned to watch Vision, who had stood up, excused himself from the rest of the Avengers who were now yelling or singing or laughing drunkenly, walking over to her with a expression that might've been gentle and concerned, but Pietro was pretty bad at reading expressions, that was Wanda's thing._

 _She knew who she could and couldn't trust, but Pietro didn't trust anyone—except for Wanda, of course, but that went without being said—and he would trust in Wanda's trust in someone, but he didn't have to like it._

* * *

Pietro glared at the android, and Wanda looked torn between laughing at him for his clear distrust and comforting him.

"Miss Maximoff," Vision said politely, bowing slightly as he offered a hand for her to take, helping her up from her chair. "Would you accompany me outside this fine night? The stars are lovely at this time."

'I don't like him,' Pietro said immediately, looking at the synthezoid through narrowed eyes.

Wanda ignored him, because she understood his apprehension—they were unused to anyone being kind without an ulterior motive—but she couldn't really roll her eyes at him or say anything back without the Vision thinking it was directed at him.

"Yes, I'd like that," Wanda nodded, leaving her hand on the synthezoid's arm as he escorted her out of the room, just in time to miss Thor shouting, "ANOTHER!" and smashing his glass on the floor while Clint fell out of his chair at the noise and then started laughing. Even Steve was chuckling—apparently Thor had had enough Asgardian liquor with him to share with the supersoldier.

Sighing, Pietro followed his sister and the synthezoid, before running ahead, checking the hallways, running back to direct Wanda down the ones that didn't have any S.H.I.E.L.D agents walking them, while she pulled Vision down the corridors her brother directed her down.

After a little while of this Vision looked at her thoughtfully. "It seems to me that you are somehow taking a route to avoid other lifeforms."

Wanda looked straight ahead. "I don't want to deal with any S.H.I.E.L.D agents right now," she stated, and Vision could only nod, swallowing his question to ask her how she knew.

Just to see if he could get a reaction, Pietro jogged backwards in front of the synthezoid, poking at his chest.

The synthezoid didn't seem to be aware of the fact that the ghost of the speedster was in front of him transitioning between trying to poke him, jumping up and down and waving his arms, and making faces.

Wanda couldn't stop giggling, and Vision looked at her, a small frown adorning his strange red face.

He opened his mouth to ask, but Wanda just shook her head at him, still giggling as Pietro started walking backwards but sideways in the air, talking nonstop simply because Vision couldn't hear him and couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Although, when Pietro came closer and yelled a Sokovian curse at the side of the synthezoid's head where an ear should be, Vision did turn his head to frown slightly at the spot of air, while Pietro waved a hand frantically in front of his face, asking, 'Eye test! How many fingers am I holding up?!'

"I'll tell you when we get outside," Wanda told Vision, laughing and shaking her head at her brother's antics, realizing just how much she'd missed that side of him.

* * *

Once they made it outside, they sat down on the landing pad of the helicarrier.

Wanda sat with her legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles, her arms behind her propping herself up, while Vision sat cross-legged, sitting down on his cap so it wouldn't blow around in the chilly wind that buffeted them, causing Wanda's long, dark brown hair to whip around her face.

Wanda kept giggling, and Vision looked at her with concern. Analyzing the components of her blood and the saturation of alcohol on her breath led him to see that she wasn't to the point of inebriation where that alcohol could be the sole cause of her giggly, cheerful mood.

He watched her as she sobered slightly, whispering, "Calm down, Pietro."

A moment later and she was smiling softly again.

Vision couldn't help but feel confused and concerned. Wanda had been talking to 'Pietro' even before she'd started drinking, and had kept it up throughout the drinking game and during the walk to the landing pad of the helicarrier, during which Vision had thought he'd felt a slight coolness in the air where she'd been looking.

"I'm not hallucinating," Wanda said suddenly, turning to give him a look like she was just daring him to call her a liar. Her eyes looked black under the moonlight. "I _know_ that Pietro's dead."

Vision felt even more confused as she turned her head to look away from him, smirking slightly at the air with a soft, "Hush, Pietro, I'm explaining. If anybody will believe me, it will be Vision."

She looked back at him, her smile wry. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

Vision considered this. "I have not seen evidence to prove nor disprove the existence of bodiless spirits," he said after a few moments.

Wanda nodded, like she already knew this and was just confirming what she knew. "Pietro is still here," she said to him after a few moments, not quite looking at him as her hand reached out to clutch around air.

A wayward strand of dark hair that was fluttering across her face was gently brushed back behind her ear, and she hadn't touched it.

With a gleeful whoop Wanda suddenly leapt to her feet, throwing herself at the air in what Vision believed was generally referred to as a flying-tackle-hug.

He felt even more bemused as Wanda clutched the air and leaned into it without falling over, saying excitedly, "You did it, Pietro! I knew you could!"

Vision was on his feet in a second, striding to her side—

And then he was sailing through the air from a kick to the chest, taken completely off-guard, crashing into the ground and rolling before catching himself in a crouch, looking up at where Wanda was exclaiming, _"Pietro!_ What did you do _that_ for?"

Vision found his doubt disappearing very quickly as something grabbed his arm and pulled him back to Wanda in a fraction of a second.

Turning his light-vision to thermo-vision, he saw, next to the red, orange and yellow form of Wanda, a blurry blue and violet form in the vague shape of the speedster.

Vision held up his hands. "I believe you," he said, as the cool form zipped over to stand right in front of him, seeming to be waving an arm in his face.

"He wants you to tell him how many fingers he's holding up," Wanda said.

"Then tell him he needs to keep his hand still," Vision informed her, and the blue-violet form in his vision froze.

Wanda was looking at him with wide eyes and a growing smile.

Vision squinted slightly at the form of the ghost in front of him. "One finger," he said, leaning back slightly as he smirked. "And your middle finger, at that."

The blue-violet form that was Pietro dropped its arm, disappearing for a moment before reappearing by Wanda's side, wrapping an arm around her waist.

"So you can see him?" Wanda asked, a hopeful tone in her voice as she looked at him.

Vision switched back to light-vision, and, looking at where he knew Pietro to be, he thought perhaps he could see the vaguest blue suggestion of his form. He focused on it, adjusting his vision to include the particular spectrum of light that Pietro was emitting, and gradually the speedster's form took more defined shape.

After a few moments, Vision could make out facial features.

Smiling, Vision held out a hand. "I'm Vision. It's a pleasure to officially meet you, Mr. Maximoff."

The ghostly blue form of Pietro just looked at him.

Wanda elbowed him in the side, whispering, "You're supposed to shake his hand, Pietro."

Pietro muttered something that Vision couldn't hear, before stepping form and taking his hand. Pietro wasn't quite corporeal, and Vision found himself almost unconsciously changing his mass to match Pietro's, becoming equally partially-intangible, which made it easier to shake the speedster's hand.

Pietro and Wanda both looked at him with twin expressions of surprise, and Vision smiled slightly.

"I can alter my density," he explained, and Pietro said something and took the opportunity to shove him in the chest.

" _Pietro!"_ Wanda chastised.

"It's alright," Vision said quickly, offering a calm smile once more. "It was a natural progression of curiosity, and lacked malicious intent."

Pietro was saying something to him, gesturing with his hands, and Vision frowned slightly.

"I can't hear you yet," he said, tilting his head as he began analyzing his own audio system. "Give me a moment to adjust to the particular soundwaves you're speaking on."

A few moments of adjusting later and Pietro's voice drifted into audibility.

'—so this guy can see me and maybe hear me, huh? Good thing to know I'm not just in your head, sister, and that I actually do have some form, this is not so bad, actually, but good luck trying to get any of the others to believe this, they will probably think you've corrupted Vision with your insanity or used your powers to alter his mind into believing that I exist, they will probably think I am just in your head and in the head of anyone else you cause to see your hallucinations—'

"I assure you," Vision broke in, "that you do have temperature and form, even if you are no longer alive and have very little mass."

Pietro very clearly existed, but he had no heartbeat, no breath, and there seemed to be holes in his form where he'd been struck by the bullets, which Vision found curious. Suddenly he had a feeling he knew what Wanda was asking about back inside at the table when she'd asked the air: Does it hurt?

Pietro shrugged. 'Cogito ergo sum, no?'

"René Descartes, yes," Vision said. "'I think, therefore I am.'" He couldn't get cold, but he shivered nonetheless, the statement resonating with his own existence as a synthezoid created of vibranium-bonded tissue and artificial intelligence.

'I wish you both luck trying to explain this to the other Avengers,' Pietro huffed, crossing his arms, looking somewhere between annoyed and amused.

Wanda grinned, and her eyes for a moment glowed scarlet. "Oh, it will be fun."

* * *

 **AN: I honestly didn't plan for Vision to figure things out so fast. But like I said, he's special. And events got away from me.**

 **I almost want to continue this one... what do you think, would you be interested in another chapter expanding on this idea before I move on to other AUs?  
**


	6. AU V: Life After Death

**AN: I couldn't decide how to continue the Pietro-is-a-ghost storyline, so I just wrote up both of my ideas. This chapter is Version #1.  
**

* * *

 **AU V: Life After Death (my body's dead but I'm alive so take that and shove it where the sun don't shine)**

Captain America strode into the room, the Black Widow right behind him. He stood there for a moment, looking out over the group of Avenger trainees, before he said, "Avengers... assemble."

Wanda took a few steps forward, shooting a smile over at the ghostly form of her brother.

"Now, the four of you—" Steve started.

Pietro crossed his arms and humphed, and Wanda quickly interjected, " _Five_ of us."

Steve and Natasha looked at her, the former confused, the latter skeptical.

"You all need to start training, if you want to join the Avengers," Steve started again. "Now, if the four of you—"

"Five of us," Vision spoke up. "She's telling the truth. Pietro _is_ here, actually."

Steve sent the synthezoid a disapproving glare. It seemed cruel of Vision to humor Wanda's unhealthy fantasy that her brother was still alive. She'd only be hurt more because of it.

Wanda rolled her eyes at his thoughts.

'I totally called it, didn't I?' Pietro said, grinning as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and nuzzled a cold cheek against her warm neck.

"You totally called it," Wanda grinned, leaning into his embrace.

The others were all looking at her, now—Steve felt pain and pity for her, Natasha thought she was up to something, Sam felt a pang of empathy as he thought about the grief she was dealing with and he thought about offering her counseling, and Rhody thought she was crazy but didn't particularly care as long as she pulled her weight.

Vision was... well, Vision.

"I believe I explained earlier," Vision continued, "that his spirit exists in an immaterial form composed of light that the human eye is incapable of seeing. He likewise speaks on radio wavelengths that humans are incapable of hearing."

"Yeah, sure," Rhodey said, shifting his weight in the metal suit, "can be get on with the training now? Because I don't think that debate is going to get us anywhere."

'Can I go push him?' Pietro asked, letting go of Wanda so he was standing beside her again, nodding over at Captain America.

"Probably not a good idea right now," Wanda told her brother, before turning to nod at the others, ignoring Pietro's disappointed huff. "Yes, let us begin training."

'Please tell me this won't be boring,' Pietro muttered with a sigh.

* * *

Sam Wilson didn't notice anything at first.

It wasn't until, as he was straining at the benchpress, he glanced over at the bench next to him and saw the barbell there moving up and down in the air by itself.

Sam froze, his own barbell held straight above him as he just stared, blinking and shaking his head.

But no, there was nobody there. And there was no telling scarlet energy of Wanda's.

The barbell was just... moving up and down in the air, like someone was pressing it, except that... there was nobody there...

Sam's arms were trembling, and as he looked back up at the barbell he was holding even as his arms gave out, and it fell towards his face—

Sam instinctively winced and flinched away, bracing himself for the blow, only... it never came.

Opening his eyes, Sam saw that the barbell was hovering there above him. Then it moved through the air and was set down on the ground.

Sam shot into a sitting position, dark eyes wide. "What just happened?" he asked, staring down at the barbell as if it would grow legs and start walking away.

He felt a clap on his shoulder, and whipped his head around.

But there was nobody there.

* * *

The first uncanny thing that James Rhodes witnessed was the bullets he fired missing the target.

Or, more accurately, the target _missing the bullets._

Because, from one moment to the next, the target had moved about three feet to the left.

Rhodey narrowed his eyes at the target and raised his hand again, feeling annoyed that he had to practice shooting a hand-gun when he was already proficient at it, and he'd be doing all the fighting in his War Machine suit.

He readjusted his aim for the target's new position and fired.

He missed. Because the target was back where it used to be.

"What the hell?" Rhodey asked, reloading the gun and aiming again, dark eyes narrowed. He shot the target. It didn't move.

"Okay then," Rhodey drawled out, shooting again.

That time, the bullet didn't hit the target. But the target also didn't move.

The bullet just... disappeared. He fired a gun, and the bullet never hit anything.

"What the hell?!" Rhodey demanded, lowering the gun as he looked around. "What kind of a trick is this?!"

And then there was a clattering sound, and he glanced down to see the bullet lying on the ground at his feet.

He knelt down and picked up the bullet, examining it.

The bullet was in perfect condition, like it hadn't hit anything.

"What the hell?!" he demanded again.

* * *

Steve Rogers didn't realize what was happening at first.

He was sparring with Wanda, and she was very good at deflecting his attacks with her magic, though they would need to work on her actual hand-to-hand combat skills and her concentration levels.

Every now and then her hazel eyes would slide away from him, either behind him or to the side, and she would laugh or snort, and wouldn't be paying attention enough to block his next attack.

And yet, his attacks were continually blocked, and Wanda would always looks surprised when Steve was thrown across the room.

He thought it was just her magic reacting, at first. But upon continued sparring, he determined that her use of magic was always shown by scarlet wisps or flares of energy, but not the reactions that surprised her never had the scarlet wisps to go along with them, and she would always apologize and mention Pietro. Steve would ignore the statements, make a mental note to get her to talk to someone later.

Often, after Steve had been thrown across the room and was pushing himself back to his feet, he would see Wanda facing away from him and gesturing her arms as though she were talking to someone, even though nobody was there. He thought her delusion had manifested in her magic.

It wasn't until he threw his shield at her at it stopped a foot away from her, remained still in the air for a moment and then shot back at him, knocking him off his feet and knocking the breath from his lungs that left him gasping for several moments that he even started to reconsider.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Wanda said, hurrying over to his side and kneeling beside him, hands hovering above him like she wanted to do something to help but didn't know what. "Are you alright? I'm so sorry, Pietro's very protective of me, and he doesn't know his own strength, sometimes.

She turned her head, narrowing her eyes at a spot beside her, hissing, "Pietro! You really need to stop doing that!"

A pause, and then she said, "I would have blocked it with my magic, you didn't need to do that! And you need to be more careful, you know. We still don't know the full effects your current state has on your strength and speed."

Steve caught his breath and sat up, giving her an odd look.

She looked back at him, smiling, offering her hand to help him to his feet.

He accepted it with a nod, taking her hand and standing—and then almost flying across the room as something pushed him in the back.

" _Pietro!"_ Wanda shrieked, hands on her hips as she stared at a spot in the air. "I _told_ you to stop that!"

Her gaze softened and she sighed, reaching out a hand, as if resting it on the cheek of someone slightly taller than her. "I know, Pietro. I know. But we're not there anymore. These are the _Avengers._ That's _Captain America._ He's not going to hurt me."

Steve was staring at her, eyes narrowed, head tilted slightly to the side.

She turned to smile apologetically at him. "I'd make him apologize for himself, but I'm afraid you can't hear him, so there would be no point."

"Where is he?" Steve asked, eyes flicking around, before landing back on her, his eyebrows raising.

There was a tap on his shoulder, and Steve turned, but there was no one there.

Wanda giggled.

Steve whirled his head around to narrow his eyes at her.

"Sorry," she said, stifling her giggles quickly. "He was making funny faces at you."

"He can touch, but he's not visible or audible?" Steve asked dubiously, stance tense as he looked at her.

"He can make himself corporeal if he concentrates hard," Wanda said, her shifting around him, and Steve felt pokes in his back, sides, stomach, shoulders, face.

He stepped back, glaring around him.

"He's still getting used to it," Wanda said, smiling slightly as she wrapped her arms around air and leaned in a way that shouldn't have been possible without her falling to the ground. "He likes knowing he can touch things." Her hair was brushed back behind her ears without her moving.

She looked relaxed, calm, happy.

Steve straightened his shoulders, holding out a hand. "Then I'd like him to shake my hand," he stated.

Wanda straightened and nodded to the air beside her.

Steve's hand was suddenly grabbed in a firm, cold grip, shaken once, and then let go.

Steve stared down at his hand as if it had turned into a pirate hook.

Glancing back up at Wanda, he asked curiously, "Can he hold a pen and write on paper?"

A moment later there was a cool breeze and his hand was clutched around a slip of paper.

He blinked, opening his hand and carefully unfolding the piece of white parchment.

In messy, fast scrawl with a ballpoint pen, were written the words:

 _didn't see that coming, did you?_

* * *

The exercise equipment didn't do anything for Vision, what with his ability to alter his density.

'Need some help with that?' Pietro asked, suddenly leaning against the air beside the synthezoid like one would lean against a wall, arms and ankles crossed, a grin scrawled across his translucent blue features.

"What are you suggesting?" Vision inquired, raising a hairless eyebrow of his red face.

Pietro snorted, from where he was now seated at a table, his right elbow resting on the surface. 'An arm wrestle, of course.'

Vision blinked his light blue eyes thoughtfully. "That is worth a try," he acknowledged, walking over and sitting on the opposite bench, resting his own right elbow on the table and clasping hands with the ghost. "On three?"

'One two three,' Pietro counted quickly and shoved the Vision's arm down against the table, grinning.

Vision hummed in his throat, looking at Pietro with interest. "I wasn't prepared that time. Rematch?"

'I never turn down a challenge,' Pietro smirked, letting the synthezoid's arm up so they could try again. 'I'll even let you do the counting this time.'

"One, two, three," the Vision said, and that time their arms went right through each other.

The both blinked at each other.

'And I was doing so well,' Pietro said, pulling an expression that might've been a pout, but might've been a frown.

"Then let us try again," Vision offered. "Perhaps we will be able to deduce what it is that changes you from intangible to tangible."

Fifty arm wrestles later, and the score was:

 _Cat's Game: 21_

 _Vision: 19_

 _Pietro: 10_

* * *

Natasha walked through a section of air that was unusually cold.

She whirled around, narrowing her eyes at the spot, waving her hand through it.

Nothing.

She walked through the spot again.

Nothing.

She glared at the spot suspiciously for a moment, before turning and beginning to walk again.

A few steps later and she ran into something.

Taking a step back to regain her balance, she blinked in surprise.

There was nothing in front of her.

She reached forward.

Still nothing.

Pursing her lips, she took a few more steps forward, till her hand hit something solid, even though there appeared to be only air.

She frowned, using both her hands to try to map out the object, realizing quickly that it felt like a toned chest.

So she punched where the face would be.

The—invisible person?—reeled back, but there was no sound of them crashing into anything, and nothing she could see in the hallway moved. But then, there wasn't much that could move in the smooth metal hallways of the new Avengers base.

A moment later and there was a punch to her jaw, knocking her back and causing her to follow the momentum of the swing and flip, landing in a crouch, body buzzing with tension.

Her eyes scanned the space for a moment before she launched forward with a quick, her foot passing through cold air.

More whirling punches and kicks, but she didn't hit anything. She paused, glancing around, heart rate raised slightly.

There was nothing and nobody there, and the air was warm again.

"An impressive performance."

Natasha whirled around to see Fury standing there, arms clasped behind his back, wearing the usual black eyepatch and black trenchcoat. "May I ask as to the reason for such a display in an empty hallway?"

"Obviously, it wasn't empty," Natasha said coolly, posture straightening and loosening, falling into stride beside him as he began walking down the hall again.

"And what was it that was there?" Fury asked just as coolly, as if they were discussing the weather.

"Well," Natasha said casually as they walked, "have you heard Wanda's claims about her brother still being around?"

"Her brother's dead," Fury stated.

"Yes," Natasha agreed. "He is."

Fury turned to give her an appraising glance. "But you think there might be something to her claims?"

Natasha shrugged. "We should talk with her, just to see."

* * *

"Natasha, Fury," Steve greeted when the came into the large training room, striding quickly over to them. "I have something I need to talk to you about."

"We have something we need to talk to Wanda about," Natasha said coolly, giving him a look, as if just daring him to protest that.

"Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about," Steve said honestly.

Fury raised the eyebrow of his good eye at the captain. "You've been witness to paranormal activities, then?"

"You could say that," Steve agreed, shoulders straightening.

"Guys?"

The three of them turned to see Sam walk up to them, grinning awkwardly as he gestured behind him. "Did anybody happen to mess with the barbells and not tell me about the trick? Because that was _weird."_

"What was?" Fury half-asked and half-demanded, rounding to face the veteran.

"Uh, the barbells lifting themselves?" Sam said, glancing between their faces. "Is that not a thing that you guys set up that I just didn't know about?"

Before any of them could answer, Rhodey walked up, arms crossed, expression unamused. "Alright, who the hell messed with gun range? Because that kinda shit is _not_ appreciated, and something I'd expect from Tony, not one of you guys."

He glanced at the four of them, who were all looking at him, and then turned to look at each other.

"You guys are hiding something from us, aren't you?" Sam asked pointedly, cross his arms and raising his eyebrows at the Black Widow, Captain America, and former Director Fury.

The three of them shared a glance before turning to the Avengers in Training, and Fury stated simply: "Something's hidden from all of us."

"Paranormal activities," Natasha clarified, face remaining carefully blank and neutral.

Sam and Rhodey glanced at each other.

"Are you believing this?" Rhodey asked, jerking his thumb at the others.

Sam shrugged. "You heard what Wanda and Vision keep saying about Pietro still being here, man. If we're gonna be joining the Avengers, I get the feelin' we're gonna have to get used to some weird shit happening 'round here."

"Ghosts aren't weird," Rhodey said with a roll of his eyes. "They're just stories. They _don't exist."_

"We used to think the same thing about aliens," Fury pointed out.

"I think we're missing out on a debate we should be part of," came Vision's voice, and the five of them already standing there turned to see Vision approaching, Wanda beside him, looking like she was trying not to life.

"Look at her smile like that!" Rhodey exclaimed, gesturing at her. "Obviously, it's a trick."

A moment later and Rhodey was lying on the ground and gasping, eyes wide as he tried to catch his breath back from getting knocked down.

Everybody except for Vision and Wanda tensed.

" _Pietro!"_ Wanda said, crossing her arms and glaring next to her. "How many times have I told you not to do that now?!"

Rhodey pushed himself into a sitting position, glancing around wildly. "What the _hell_ just happened?!" he demanded, getting back up to his feet and brushing off the back of his pants.

"What happened to me several times earlier," Steve replied, arms crossed, staring at Wanda expectantly. "Tell everyone what you told me earlier."

Wanda smirked slightly, glancing between them one by one. "I'm not hallucinating. Pietro's soul is actually still alive. Are you willing to take my word for it and would you rather he show you all personally?"

They didn't even get a chance to answer before the world blurred, and everyone except for Wanda stumbled as the tried to catch their balance after being deposited on the other side of the room over by the barbells.

"Okay," Sam said, clutching his stomach, "that was nauseating."

A barbell lifted in the air and started getting spun around.

Sam's eyes widened and he pointed at it accusingly, saying, "See?! See?! I told you! _I told you!"_

Wanda was snickering, and Steve sent her a look, before narrowing his eyes at the twirling barbell and saying, "Pietro. Stop this. Go get the pen and paper."

The barbell was set down, and Wanda snorted. "He just flipped you off," she informed the captain, hazel eyes twinkling.

"Well, since I can't see him, I guess he can flip me off as much as he wants," Steve said calmly.

A moment later and there was a pad of paper floating in the air in front of them, with these words written in messy scrawl:

 _this is Pietro hi do you believe me yet or would you like me to punch you in the face?_

"Oh man," Sam said, glancing at Steve as he gestured at the floating pad of paper, "I knew your world was crazy, but this is _crazy."_

Rhodey glanced between the faces of all of them, eyes flicking back and forth, before he laughed awkwardly. "C'mon, guys," he said, shaking his head and shifting his weight, "do you really honestly expect us to believe this?"

 _the punch offer is still open you know,_ was written on the pad of paper.

Rhodey stilled as he read it.

Wanda smiled, walking over to the pad of paper and taking it out of the air, setting it down on the floor before wrapping her arms around the air like she'd wrap her arms around her brother's neck, and then her knees were lifted so she was sitting bridle-style in the air.

She was spun around, laughing lightly.

Everyone stared.

Wanda was set down, smiling, and the pad of paper was picked up again.

 _seriously if you don't believe I'm real yet I'm going to punch you,_ was written.

"Nobody needs to get punched," Fury spoke up, trying to gage where Pietro's face was so he could kind of look at where Pietro's eyes were. "How did this happen?"

 _don't know,_ was written. _I woke up a few hours after I got shot and stood up, leaving my body lying on the table. I've been like this since. I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't sleep, I'm stronger and faster than I used to be. It's pretty cool, actually._

 _took me a while to get the hang of moving around and touching things, now if only I could make myself visible and audible... only Wanda and Vision can see and hear me._

"I had to change my visual and audio settings to include ranges of light and sound that are imperceptible to humans," Vision explained when everyone looked at him.

"Well," Fury said. "I think we've spent enough time on this particular revelation. Everybody, get back to training." He shot a look at the space above the pad of paper. "That means you too, Pietro. Vision will be your training partner."

 _oh and what am I supposed to do?_ appeared on the paper.

"I'm not in charge of that," Fury said simply. He pointed at Captain America. "Ask him."

Then Fury turned and strode out of the room.

Wanda laughed, and they all looked at her.

"Oh, sorry," Wanda grinned, tucking a stray stand of hair behind her ear. "Pietro just gave Fury a compliment, is all. And now he is vehemently denying it."

"I do believe it was a compliment," Vision added, and then was suddenly thrown across the room.

The synthezoid shot off the wall and collided with something in the air in the middle of the room, exchanging blows with the air.

" _Boys,"_ Natasha said with a roll of her eyes, and Wanda laughed.

"Always jumping into fights," Wanda agreed, even as she sent a scarlet blast of energy at the Black Widow, who flipped out the way and then launched her own attack.

"Looks like everyone's pairing off," Sam remarked, crossing his arms and looking between Rhodey and Steve. "And here we're left with an odd number."

Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "So, what, does that make this a threesome?"

Steve fought the urge to sigh and roll his eyes. "Sometimes I forget you're Tony's best friend, and then you say something to remind me."

"Now you're missing him, aren't you?" Rhodey grinned.

"Not quite yet," Steve said, lips twitching. "You two go put on your suits and spar outside. I'll be walking around keeping an eye on everyone."

Sam elbowed Rhodey in the side. "He means that he's going to analyze all our strengths and weaknesses," Sam informed him, and Rhodey snorted.

"Good, he'll be doing his job," Rhodey said, as the two of them turned and started walking away towards where their suits were being stored, Sam sending Steve a lazy salute over his shoulder.

Steve nodded at him, before turning his attention to the sparring match between Vision and Pietro's... ghost. There wasn't really a better word for whatever Pietro was.

Steve could only see the way Vision was fighting, but sometimes, when they collided blows, there was a flicker of blue, and a few times Steve thought he might have been able to make out the outline of Pietro's form.

One of the members of his team was a ghost.

And here Steve had thought he's seen enough that nothing could surprise him anymore.

* * *

Captain America, Black Widow, and their new team of Avengers met up with Iron Man on their first mission.

"The weapons are in the building on the left," came the Scarlet Witch's voice over the comms.

"How the hell did you know that?" Iron Man asked as his suit analyzed the buildings and came up with the same conclusion.

"Quicksilver did recon," she said.

"Who the hell is Quicksilver?" Iron Man demanded.

"Quicksilver is Pietro," came Captain America's calm voice. "You remember Pietro, right?"

"Pietro's dead," Iron Man said flatly.

"Only kind of," came the voice of the Falcon. "He's also kind of still alive."

"I'll explain it to you later," came the voice of Vision.

"287 soldiers coming from the right, 344 coming from the left, and 456 coming at us from behind," came the Scarlet Witch's voice. "Quicksilver counted."

"Let's do this," Captain America said.

* * *

It wasn't until Iron Man was surrounded by troops and getting shot at from all directions, having trouble standing and getting his bearings, and Captain America ordered, "Quicksilver, go help Iron Man out," that Tony started to believe they weren't actually pulling his leg.

Because in a moment the troops were knocked down and all their guns were taken from them, and something invisible helped Tony back to his feet.

After that mission, Tony worked with Vision to create special lenses that would allow them all to see Pietro, and a special comm that could pick up Pietro's voice so they could hear him.

* * *

'Can you see me?! Hear me?!' Pietro asked excitedly once Tony and Vision had finished the project and had brought the entire team to check it out.

The speedster was bouncing on the balls of his feet while standing a few inches above the ground, grinning.

"Yeah, we can see you," Sam said, and chuckled indulgently when Pietro fist-pumped and exclaimed, 'Yes! Now I won't have to use the stupid pen and pad of paper any longer!'

"You're blue," Rhodey remarked dryly.

Tony started humming the song 'Blue (Da Ba Dee)' by Eiffel 65.

Pietro shrugged and said simply, "Yeah, and you're black. So what?"

"Nothing," Rhodey said with a roll of his eyes. "I just didn't expect you to be so blue."

Clint was frowning at the speedster and the holes that went through his chest, arm, and leg. "Are those the bullet wounds?" he asked, nodding at them.

Pietro glanced down at himself. 'Oh, yeah,' he shrugged. 'I don't know why they're there. But they don't hurt so much any longer.'

"I'm sorry," Clint said quietly, expression pained.

'Don't be,' Pietro said with an easy roll of his shoulders. 'It was not your fault.'

"The bullet wounds don't hurt any _longer?"_ Natasha asked the speedster, raising a red eyebrow.

'I don't really feel pain in this state,' Pietro shrugged, before he looked at them all and grinned. 'Hey, you know what this means, right? Now you can all see it when I do _this,_ ' and he flipped them all off with both hands.

"Steve doesn't like that kind of body language," Tony said with a smirk, and Steve sighed.

"Well, this is certainly going to make missions easier," Steve said, stepping forward and holding out his hand for the speedster to shake. "It's good to officially meet you again, Pietro."

* * *

When Thor came back down to help them with a mystical threat, he took one look at where Pietro stood and greeted boisterously: "Greetings, Pietro! I was not informed that you still walked this Realm!"

'I don't usually walk it,' Pietro shrugged, smirking. 'I prefer running over walking.'

Thor laughed and clapped Pietro on the incorporeal shoulder. "I do not know how you escaped Valhalla, but I shall be glad to fight by your side."

Pietro glanced over at his sister and gestured inconspicuously at the God of Thunder, pulling a _Can you even believe this guy?_ expression.

Wanda giggled.

* * *

When the Hulk reappeared on the radar, Quicksilver was the first Avenger to get there.

'I'm here' Quicksilver said into the comm, sliding to a stop in front of the green giant that didn't see him and couldn't touch him. 'He's angry.'

"It's Bruce," came the Black Widow's voice. "He's always angry."

'Good to know,' Quicksilver said, tilting his neck as if to crack it and interlacing his fingers, flipping his hands around to stretch his arms out in front of him. 'Any suggestions for what I'm supposed to do until the entire team gets here?'

"Keep him from hurting any civilians," came Captain America's voice.

'Got it,' Quicksilver said, eying the green giant as Hulk smashed up buildings while civilians ran screaming. 'Okay,' he said, shifting his stance, 'I've never tried to move something this large before, but it shouldn't be impossible.'

Dashing forward, he grabbed one of the Hulk's huge wrists and, using all his concentration, managed to zip the Hulk out of the city and out into the middle of a nearby forest, not so much letting go of the Hulk as losing his concentration and becoming completely incorporeal, unable to hold onto the Hulk any longer.

The Hulk spun in a circle, growling, but he didn't see a threat and just ended up standing there.

'Okay, I got him out of the city,' Quicksilver said, sitting down in the air to keep an eye on Bruce Banner's alter ego. 'We're in the forest now. Hulk seems appropriately confused.'

"Good job, Avenger," came Captain America's voice.

Pietro tried not to grin too much. 'Just get your asses out here and deal with this guy,' he muttered. _'Slow pokes.'_

* * *

It was never a good idea to walk around the Avengers base while not wearing the Quicksilver-Vision lenses and Quicksilver-Audio earpiece. If he saw you weren't them, you were going to get pranked, which Steve found out when he ended up with a bunch of post-it notes all over his suit that said things like, "KICK ME" and "GERIATRIC."

Taking them off in order to ignore Pietro never worked, as Clint found out when he got tired of the kid's antics and went to shoot of some steam in the archery range, only for Pietro to snatch every single one of his arrows out of the air before they could hit anything.

Everyone had to get used to get zipped around from place to place by an impatient speedster, though only Wanda ever actually seemed comfortable with it.

When not on mission, they were always together, and it wasn't an uncommon sight to see him running through the halls with a laughing Wanda in his arms as he weaved around people, and Wanda would say, "Pietro, slow _down!"_ and Pietro would laugh and say, 'What did you say, sister? Go _faster?'_ and then speed up.

Vision seemed to gravitate to the two of them, and the three of them were often sighted training together, or just talking.

'You're a synthezoid and I'm a ghost,' Pietro said to Vision once. 'Some people could argue that neither of us are real. But that doesn't matter, because even if the entire world believed that, Wanda would still know that we are real. And also, we can walk though walls! That is pretty cool, you have got to admit.'


	7. AU VI: Age of Miracles

**AN: Version #2 of how the Pietro-is-a-ghost storyline could have gone.  
**

* * *

 **AU VI: Age of Miracles (brought back to life)**

'—So this guy can see me and maybe hear me, huh?' Pietro said with a quick gesture at Vision, though his gaze was directed at Wanda, and he smiled teasingly. 'Good thing to know I'm not just in your head, sister, and that I actually do have some form, this is not so bad, actually, but good luck trying to get any of the others to believe this, they will probably think you've corrupted Vision with your insanity or used your powers to alter his mind into believing that I exist, they will probably think I am just in your head and in the head of anyone else you cause to see your hallucinations—'

"I assure you," Vision broke in, "that you do have temperature and form, even if you are no longer alive and have very little mass."

Pietro very clearly existed, but he had no heartbeat, no breath, and there seemed to be holes in his form where he'd been struck by the bullets, which Vision found curious. Suddenly he had a feeling he knew what Wanda was asking about back inside at the table when she'd asked the air: Does it hurt?

"Does it hurt?" Vision asked curiously, nodding at the bullet wounds, because he might have heard Wanda's question but he hadn't heard Pietro's answer.

Pietro looked at him for a moment. 'A little bit?' he said doubtfully, like he was guessing. Then he shrugged. 'It is not that bad.'

A moment of silence, and then Vision blinked. "If you'll excuse me," he said with a gracious inclination of his head even as he started turning back toward the doors leading inside the Helicarrier, "I need to check something."

"Okay," Wanda said, distracted as she giggled at Pietro spinning around in the air like he was sitting in a desk chair, waving his arms and legs and shrieking for her to stop making it spin, while she insisted that it wasn't her and that he was doing it all himself.

A moment later and he staggered off the spinning, invisible chair, and stumbled toward her dizzily, trying to catch himself on her shoulder only to fall through her and up somersaulting several times in the air before ending up sprawled flat half-submerged in the landing pad.

Stilling her giggles, Wanda walked over and offered him a hand up.

It took them several tries before Pietro was able to become tangible enough to grab her hand while remaining intangible enough to get up out of the ground.

'This is very weird,' Pietro remarked as he stood up and Wanda hugged him, one of her arms slipping through his translucent blue chest.

Vision watched them thoughtfully for another moment before heading back inside. If what he suspected was correct...

* * *

Vision slipped incorporeally into the medical room that Pietro's body was contained in, before becoming solid again and walking over to the table.

What he suspected had indeed been correct.

Pietro's body, which, hours after its death, should have been bloated and discolored like any other hours-old corpse, was in pristine condition.

Aside from the bullet holes and blood-soaked clothes, Pietro could have been sleeping.

Except that the body's heart wasn't beating, and it wasn't breathing. It certainly wasn't alive—and yet, it wasn't quite _dead,_ either.

Pietro wasn't dead. His soul was still alive, and felt pain from his injuries, which should not have been possible unless he was still linked to his body, somehow. Because if he was truly dead and had been completely cut off from his body, he shouldn't be feeling anything.

Not to mention the fact that his body wasn't behaving the way a dead body should.

And then there was a single heartbeat, before the body flatlined again.

"Tony Stark will want to see this," Vision said.

* * *

Tony Stark was drunk.

No, not just drunk—he was utterly, _completely_ inebriated.

He'd just attempted to drunkenly kiss Steve and gotten pushed away (apparently Steve was only slightly tipsy and not nearly drunk enough to kiss drunk teammates who were suddenly feeling overly-happy and overly-sentimental), which, with his alcohol-enhanced reflexes and depth perception, had resulted in him falling fantastically to face-plant on the floor, when Jarvis's voice spoke up.

"Stark?"

"Jarvis, m'boy!" Tony slurred, rolling onto his back and toasting the ceiling with an empty beer bottle. "You hacked into the SHIELD helicarrier?"

"I'm not Jarvis," said Jarvis's voice, and Tony found himself looking up into a red and green face with remarkably human-looking blue eyes.

"Then what _are_ you?" Tony said, pushing himself into a sitting position and trying to drink from the empty bottle, only to bring it back down and frown at it when realized that it was, well, empty.

"I am _Vision,"_ the synthezoid said patiently.

"Vision?" Tony asked, brown crinkling. "Tha's a stupid name. Could ya really not think of anything better'n that? You _do_ realize that visions tend t'be deluded, right?"

"You are drunk, Stark," came Jarvis's voice, but it wasn't Jarvis. Not anymore.

Jarvis. Ultron's Vision. Ultron. Floating cities. A war-torn country his weapons had helped to tear apart. Robots everywhere. A stupid kid dead because he was fast enough to do something but not fast enough to survive it.

Tony lurched to his feet and threw himself at the counter, reaching for another alcoholic drink—it didn't matter what kind— _any_ kind—but there was a strangely cold, green hand on his arm, pulling him away.

"I think you've had enough," came Jarvis's voice.

"'S not fair, Jarv," Tony slurred as he stumbled again, catching himself on the table and letting himself sink back down to the floor, his vision blurring. "'S not fair."

"I beg your pardon?" came Jarvis's voice.

"Y'know, you used to just lock all the liquor cupboards," Tony mumbled. His shirt was getting wet. Was someone dumping a cup of water on him?

"If you would allow me to help you back to your sleeping quarters," came Jarvis's voice, and hard, Christmas-themed arms helped him up, tried to help him start walking.

But Tony just clutched him and started grossly sobbing, mumbling, "I'm sorry," over and over again.

* * *

Tony woke up in an uncomfortable bunk bed with a killer hangover.

Fortunately enough, he was lying on one of the lower bunk beds, or else, when he fell onto the floor trying to get up, it would have hurt a whole lot more than it did.

" _Fuck,"_ Tony groaned, eyes clenched shut as he just lay there for several moments on the hard floor in the (blissfully) dark room.

After what could have been several minutes he pushed himself up and stumbled out into the bright hallway, hissing at the light and shielding his eyes.

"Coffee..." he mumbled like a zombie, shuffling out into the hall towards where he thought he remember the kitchen was. "Need... coffee..."

Thor was pounding on the insides of his skull with Mjolnir. "Rude..." Tony groaned. "Really rude..."

"Maybe this will help," came Jarvis's voice, and Tony squinted out from behind his hand to see Vision standing there, holding out a large cup of water and couple aspirins.

Tony swallowed them and drank them down with water, wiping his mouth with a sleeve. "Thanks," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Dammit, should've brought my sunglasses..."

"Here," Vision said, handing him a napkin that contained a bagel with blackberry jam. "This will help stabilize your blood sugar levels while remaining easy on your liver."

Tony took the bagel and bit into it, taking a large bite and, still chewing, asked, "Okay, so, what do you want from me?"

"I need to show you something," Vision said.

"What kind of 'something'?" Tony asked through another mouthful of bagel with jam.

"A medical anomaly," Vision stated, waiting for Stark to finish chewing so he wouldn't have the chance to choke on the bagel. "Concerning one Pietro Maximoff."

As it was, Tony nearly choked on air.

* * *

Tony stared at the comatose, bullethole-riddled body of Pietro Maximoff.

"And you say that Pietro's spirit is... not _in_ his body?" Tony asked Vision and Wanda, turning to them with an eyebrow raised.

"Yes," Wanda nodded, her fingers interlacing with the fingers of a hand that wasn't there.

"If you get your Iron Man helmet, I should be able to program it to perceive him," Vision offered.

"Right," Tony nodded, making a beckoning gesture with one hand. "I'll give you the benefit of a doubt, then."

* * *

Vision's fingers on either side of Tony's helmet, and his vision through the faceplate went staticky for a moment before it cleared, and there was a ghostly blue apparition of Pietro holding Wanda's hand.

"There," Vision said, stepping back. "Can you see him?"

"You mean the blue ghost over there?" Tony asked, nodding over at Pietro. "Yeah, I can see him. You didn't mention that he was blue... what is now, an Avatar?"

'How many fingers am I holding up?' Pietro asked, raising an eyebrow as he raised his hand.

"Four fingers and a thumb," Tony answered. "Wait, did the biologists and physiologists ever decide whether the thumb actually counted as a finger or not? I don't pay too much attention to those branches of science. So if we're going to try to do what you're suggesting," he looked at Vision, " then we're going to need Helen Cho."

"I've already contacted her," Vision said. "She said that she'll be there when we arrive and that the Cradle will be ready."

"Good," Tony nodded, before pausing for a moment. "We might also want to contact Bruce Banner..."

* * *

Bruce Banner was walking along a beach in Fiji in tattered pants that were now shorts (though he wasn't too out of place what with all the other men walking around shirtless in swimming shorts and the women in bikinis), when a man near him answered his phone.

 **"Uh, hello? ...Who is this? ...Ermahgerd, this is so awesome! ...Have I seen him? Hell yeah, I see him, he's like five feet away from me right now! Do you want to talk to him...?"**

Bruce went rigid.

The man—tall, muscular like a martial artist, bald, strange scars covering his skin, wearing red and black swim shorts—walked over to him and handed him the phone. **"Guy on the phone says his name is Tony Stark,"** the guy said in a deep, gravelly voice that sounded kind of like Demi Moore, **"and that he called my phone in order to talk to you, which is just kind of awesome that he can do that!"**

Bruce took the phone from the strange man, not taking his eyes off him to make sure the guy wasn't going to attack him, even as he put the phone to his ear.

The bald, scarred guy didn't appear to be a threat, just turning eagerly to the brunette guy in the green and yellow shorts next to him, talking excitedly about how _Tony Stark_ had _called his cellphone ermahgerd how fucking cool was that?! He was never going to wash that phone ever again! This was the best vacation ever—wasn't that right, Bob?_

"How did you find me, Tony?" Bruce bit out.

"I utilized my stunning feminine wiles," Tony quipped. "Now I need you to get your ass over here—"

"I can't," Bruce interjected. "I won't. The Hulk, he's—he's too dangerous—"

" _This isn't about the Hulk,"_ Tony said.

"If it's about Natasha, I can't—" Bruce started.

"It's not about Natasha, either," Tony cut him off. "It's about Pietro Maximoff."

Bruce's gut twisted. "Isn't he dead?"

"No, he's not," Tony said. "He's just very, very comatose. And his life essence has been removed from his body and is, for lack of a better term, a 'ghost.'"

"What do you need me for?" Bruce asked around a strange obstruction in his throat.

Tony answered, "Because we might have a way to bring him back to life. But we're going to need your expertise. If you recall, this isn't exactly my area of expertise. And Helen Cho can fix Pietro's body with the Cradle, but we could really use some help figuring out how to get Pietro's 'life essence' back into his, well, his body. After we do that, you can leave, nobody will try to stop you. Promise!"

Bruce was silent for a minute. "I'll be on the next flight to New York," he said finally.

"I knew I could count on you, Bruce!" Tony said, sounding ecstatic. "You're the best! You do realize that this is going to be like the medical miracle of the decade, right?"

"See you later, Tony," Bruce said, hanging up.

He walked back over to the two men, handing the martial artist back his phone. "Here," he said rather awkwardly.

 **"No problem!"** the man grinned, slipping the phone back into a pocket of his shorts, which, Bruce now saw, were black with outlined red circles with a red line through the center and white half-circles on either side of the red line.

The man's scars were worse up close. They looked painful. Not that Bruce hadn't seen worse. Hell, he turned huge and green—a bit of scar tissue didn't disturb him in the least.

 **"Say, what did Tony Stark want, huh?"** the man asked, raising his... well, where his eyebrows would have been, anyway, had he had any.

Bruce met the man's blue gaze. "I left my shoes at his house," he said after a moment. "He wants me to go pick them up, or he's going to throw them away."

The man looked down at Bruce's bare feet and chortled. **"Well, good luck getting on the airport without your shoes, mister!"**

"Thanks," Bruce said dryly, turning to leave.

 **"Oh, and hey,"** the man added.

Bruce glanced back at him.

 **"Nobody in the private sector is stupid enough to go after you,"** the man said, suddenly looking serious. **"I can't say anything about any governments, but. You won't have to worry about a price on your head."**

Bruce blinked. Okay, so the guy had to be a secret agent for SHIELD or something. That would make sense for how and why Tony had called him. Though why SHIELD had a secret agent in Fiji...

"Thanks," Bruce said uncertainly.

The guy grinned and saluted—with the the wrong hand. **"Anytime, man!"**

Bruce nodded, feeling slightly unsettled as he turned and walked away.

Behind him, the brunette turned to the bald man and whispered, "Mr. Wilson, _was that...?"_

 **"The alter-ego of the Big Green Smashing Machine?"** the scarred man grinned. **"You bet your green and yellow heinie it was! And say, aren't you glad I kidnapped you from the Hydra base before the Avengers got there?"**

The smaller man nodded vehemently. "So very much so, sir!"

* * *

Pietro and Wanda watched as the Cradle fixed Pietro's body, the bullet wounds being closed up before their eyes.

'I think I am having an out-of-body experience,' Pietro remarked.

Tony, who was wearing his Iron Men helmet so that he could see and hear Pietro, snorted in amusement. "Literally _and_ figuratively," he agreed, gesturing at the ghost with a finger.

"Pietro, look," Wanda said, facing him, running her fingers over his intangible chest, her hazel eyes wide as she met his gaze. "The bullet wounds in your soul are closing up."

Pietro glanced down at his chest, leg and arm, noticing that the holes in his incorporeal form were indeed closing up. 'Well, that would explain why I hurt less,' he said.

Wanda beamed at him, then looked back at his body in the Cradle, resting a hand on the surface. "This is amazing," she said, glancing between her brother and Stark. "We are really going to be able to bring him back to life."

'Technically, I am still alive right now,' Pietro pointed out rather sullenly, though when Wanda raised her eyebrow and Tony swiveled his helmeted head to look at him, he amended with a shrug and a simper: 'Well, kind of.'

Tony Stark came over and knocked on the glass of the cradle, saying, "Fixing your body is the easy part. The hard part is going to be getting you back _into_ your body."

"How will you do that?" Wanda asked him curiously, attentively.

"That," Tony said, raising a hand in a 'wait for it' gesture, "is where my friend Brucie comes in."

* * *

"Where's Tony?" Steve asked, crossing his arms as he stood in front of the archer.

"Uh, why are you asking me?" Clint said, glancing around as if Steve could possibly be asking someone behind him he didn't see, before looking back up at the supersoldier with a 'how the hell should I know?' expression.

"Because you keep an eye on things, even when it's not required of you," Steve informed him frankly.

Clint shrugged, going back to his project of making trick arrows, various supplies scattered all over the table. "I think he's working on something in the lab or somethin', why?"

"Not creating another artificial intelligence, I hope," Steve remarked dryly.

"Um, no," Clint said, fiddling around with some explosives that made Steve take a step back in case they, you know, randomly went off. You never knew sometimes, with Clint. "I think it's actually more of a medical project, that'll save at least one life. Or somethin'. I don't know anything."

Steve gave him a flat look. "It sure sounds like you don't."

"Aww, _fuck it,"_ Clint said in exasperation (Steve raised an eyebrow and gave him a _Look)_ , raising his hands in the air, one of which was holding an arrow shaft while the other held a pair of needle-nose pliers. "I'm trying to concentrate on some delicate projects here and you're distracting me! If you need to talk to Tony and finally ask him out on that date that one of you _really_ needs to suck up your pride and get to asking because the sexual tension is killing us all, then just go find him and _ask_ him! It just might not be the best time, is what I'm sayin'!"

Steve frowned at him, but was immediately distracted by Bruce Banner hurrying past them, hurriedly pulling on a white lab coat over his bare chest and tattered pants.

Steve stared after him.

"Yeahhhh," Clint said, looking after the scientist as well. "Tony and Bruce in the same lab together? When has _that_ ever resulted in anything good for anyone, right?" He turned his head back to look at Steve, saying, "No, seriously, it'll be fine. Stop worrying so much, man! You're gonna get wrinkles like a 70-year-old man, and nobody wants _that."_

Steve just stared at him unamusedly, before turning to leave.

* * *

Natasha was hitting a punching bag when her phone pinged.

She ignored it.

 _Fwump! Fwump! Fwump! Fwump fwump fwump fwump!_

She kept punching, twisting and whirling and placing a few hard kicks against the punching bag's surface that resounded through the room.

Her phone, all the way in her bag at the side of the room, pinged again.

More whirling kicks and punches, more phone pinging.

With a frustrated growl she delivered one last, hard punch, before stalking over to her phone and taking it out of her bag, unlocking it. She should have just turned the damn thing off...

She opened the screen to see that she had 12 messages from Clint.

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** bruce is here u kno

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** he's kinda busy rite now

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** but if u want 2 talk 2 him after

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** he's in the lab w/ tony

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** don't tell any1 I told u

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** nat?

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** naaaaaaaaaaat?

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** don't just go barge in or anything i'm serius

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** they're helping a displaced soul return 2 its body

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** 4 realz

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** so

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** what do u think about boomerang arrows?

Natasha sighed, before texting back.

 **ME:** why boomerangs?

Hardly a moment later:

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** bcuz...

 **PURPLEHAWKEYE:** boomerangs...

* * *

"I'm here!" Bruce exclaimed, hurrying into the lab, looking flurried, curly hair sticking everywhere.

"You're lab coat's on inside-out," Tony greeted him, still wearing the Iron Man helmet. It probably said a lot about both of them Bruce didn't even blinked at that fact.

Bruce glanced down at his lab coat to see that Tony was telling the truth, but as he started pulling it off to put it on the right way, a spare Iron Man helmet was jammed over his head.

Or at least, Tony _tried_ to jam the other Iron Man helmet over Bruce's head.

"Tony!" Bruce said in frustrating, batting the billionaire away. "What the hell?"

"Put on the helmet," Tony instructed in his mechanized Iron Man voice, handing him the helmet. "And then look over there." He pointed at where Wanda was standing near the wall, watching them.

"Has anybody ever told you that you're bossy?" Bruce asked, sweeping back some stray curls before putting the helmet on.

"No, _Pepper's_ the bossy one," Tony said, even as he turned and walked back over to the screen he'd been working at. "Pepper is, literally, _the_ boss."

Iron Helmet now covering his face, Bruce turned to look at Wanda, and—and Pietro, who was standing there, blue and translucent, looking at him and flipping him off.

"That's... rude," Bruce said, his voice sounding strange through the faceplate.

Pietro smirked at him and put his hand down. 'Just making sure you can actually see me.'

"Right," Bruce said, "because flipping me off is the only thing you could do to make sure I can see you."

Pietro shrugged. 'At least you know now that this is no trick.'

Wanda wrapped her arms around Pietro's ghostly waist, looking at Bruce with an apologetic expression. "I am sorry for my brother," she said softly. "Being killed, waking up as a ghost, watching his dead body get healed... it is all very strange for him. And me." Pietro wrapped his arms around her, and shel leaned against his chest, continuing softly, "You can understand if our nerves a little strained right now."

"Uh, yes, that seems... stressful," Bruce said, rolling up his lab coat sleeves, having now completely forgotten that it was inside-out. "So, what are we doing...?"

Not even glancing up from the screen, Tony beckoned for Bruce to come over. "C'mere and take a look at this."

* * *

Thor walked through the new Avengers base, a frown on his face.

The SHIELD agents gave him a wide birth.

"Friend Steve!" bellowed Thor with a grin as he spotted the other Avenger, making his way over and clapping the supersoldier on the shoulder. "There you are! Where might all our comrades be, do you know? I would like to say my goodbyes to you all before I leave Midgard."

"Tony and Bruce are in the lab, apparently," Steve said, continuing walking, Thor easily keeping step with him. "I was heading there now, actually."

"Friend Bruce has returned?" Thor asked, raising his blond eyebrows in surprise.

"Apparently," Steve said. "It must be some special project. Clint wouldn't tell me what it was, though I'm certain he knows. I really wish my teammates would tell me things."

Thor patted the supersoldier on the shoulder. "Do not worry, I am sure Tony and Bruce have learned their lesson from last time are not trying to create another artificial being that will try to destroy the world."

Steve sighed, sounding more tired and exasperated than anything else. "Thanks, Thor."

* * *

"This is amazing," Bruce said as he stood over the Cradle, hands held out slightly as he glanced back down between Pietro's healing body and Pietro's ghost, still wearing the Iron Man helmet. "Your body is still alive and your base brain functions or still active, it's only your higher consciousness that was somehow separated. Do you have any idea how that happened?"

Pietro shook his head. ' felt like I blacked out after getting shot, and then I just... woke up. And when I stood, I left my body on the table.'

"Fascinating," Bruce said, before checking the progress of the Cradle. "It looks like your body is almost repaired. As soon as it is, we can begin the reintegration process."

"How will that work?" Wanda asked, coming over to the scientist, holding her brother's hand and pulling him with her.

"We might have to try a few different things," Bruce said, turning to flick around some information on a screen behind him, "but I think we should try the simplest one first. Wanda, you're going to need to help."

Wanda nodded determinedly.

'This is going to be very strange,' Pietro remarked.

"If this works," Tony said as he came over, patting Bruce on the back and nodding his helmeted head at the speedster's ghost, "you are going to be a medical _miracle."_

"We already are," Wanda pointed out softly, hazel eyes glowing scarlet for a moment.

'Well,' Pietro said, nudging her with a translucent blue elbow, smirking slightly, 'guess I'll just be a medical miracle _squared.'_

Bruce beckoned for Wanda to come over, and began pointing things out on the screen. "Alright, Wanda, so this is what you're going to need to do..."

* * *

When Steve and Thor got to the lab doors, they found them locked.

"Your clearance won't be enough to get you in," said a smooth, female voice from behind them, and they turned to see Natasha standing there, arms crossed. "I already tried."

Steve and Thor looked at her, then back at the lab doors.

"Wait!" Clint said, dropping down from an air vent in the ceiling, holding up his hands. "Don't do anything! Just... just wait. They're busy."

The three others glared at him.

"Clint," Steve said, leveling his gaze at the archer. "What is going on?"

"Uh," Clint said, tilting his head to scratch the back of his neck. "It's kinda complicated."

"Clint," Natasha said, narrowing her eyes at him, shifting her stance.

"And it _kinda_ revolves around the fact that Pietro isn't actually dead," Clint added quickly.

Natasha relaxed slightly, Steve's brows furrowed, and Thor grinned.

"Well, if that's all it is!" Thor said with a laugh, as the three others just stared at him. "I couldn't tell how much of it was because of the ale at the time, but I _thought_ that I saw Pietro's wraith walking around last night!"

* * *

The Cradle was open, Pietro's body healed, as he stepped inside and lay down within himself.

Not even a second later his ghost sat up, his body still lying there. 'I do not think this is going to work,' Pietro said doubtfully. 'This feels weird, because having to lie down inside my own body is very weird, but I do not feel like anything is actually going to happen.'

"Lie back down," Wanda said as she walked over to his head, putting her hands on either side of his body's face as his ghost did what she said.

"Just stay calm," Wanda said quietly, hazel eyes glowing scarlet, scarlet light dancing between her fingers and around her brother's head. "This might be slightly uncomfortable."

Bruce and Tony watched, both still wearing matching Iron Man helmets.

Bruce was wringing his hands. Tony crossed his fingers behind his back.

* * *

Natasha, Clint, and Steve were still staring at Thor when Vision walked up, carrying a couple flower bouquets.

Everyone's gaze turned to the synthezoid and the flowers in his arms.

"Uh, what are the flowers for?" Clint spoke up.

Vision blinked, looked down at the flowers, then back up at his fellow Avengers. "I was under the impression that it was popular custom to bring flowers to those who have been sick or injured," he said, suddenly sounding uncertain. "As well as to their families. I believe it is a show of compassion?"

"That is what I have heard as well!" Thor declared brightly, before furrowing his brow in consideration. "Perhaps I should go acquire flowers as well?"

Vision smiled. "Here," he said, offering one of his two bouquets to the thunderer. "I brought extra. You may give these to the Maximoffs."

Thor beamed as he took the flowers, nodding at Vision. "You are an honorable and worthy man, Friend Vision."

"Thank you," Vision said.

Natasha, Steve, and Clint just stared at the synthezoid and god.

"Anyone else suddenly feeling one-upped?" Clint asked Natasha and Steve quietly.

* * *

With a sharp gasp, Pietro sat up, the world whirling around him. "Did it work?" he asked, putting a hand to his head as if that would stop the world spinning.

Wanda's hands were suddenly there to steady him. A warm hand was placed against his cheek. "How do you feel?" she asked.

Pietro blinked as his sight started clearing, and he could make out his sister's smiling face.

Glancing down, Pietro saw hands of flesh, that flexed and straightened at his command.

Getting up out of the Cradle and standing up, Pietro looked around the lab, did a quick, superspeed lap around it, then grinned at Wanda. "I feel very much alive."

Wanda beamed and through her arms around him, burying her face in his warm shoulder. "I am so glad you are back," she whispered.

"It is good to be back," Pietro said softly, brushing his fingers through her dark hair, smiling. "Even though I never actually left." He paused for a moment. "Well, I guess I left my body, but I never left _you."_

There was a cough from behind them, and Pietro and Wanda turned to see Tony and Bruce standing there.

Bruce had taken off the Iron Man helmet and set it down on the counter beside him. He was smiling.

Tony was still wearing his helmet—he'd probably forgotten that he was wearing it—and he was fiddling with a stylus between his fingers.

"I..." Pietro started, then closed his mouth.

"We are both very grateful to you for this," Wanda said, hugging her brother again as she smiled at the two scientists. "Thank you for doing this. Thank you."

"Of course," Bruce said, seeming completely calm and at peace. "And there's no need to thank us. It was the least we could do."

"Uh, yeah, what he said," Tony nodded, picking up his phone and flicking around the screen. "Hey, nobody minds if I text Pepper and brag about this, right? It's not everyday you get to bring someone back to life, after all."

* * *

When the four of them came out of the lab, the rest of the Avengers were waiting there for him.

"It is good to see you back in full health!" Thor declared with a booming voice and huge grin, shoving a bouquet of flowers into Pietro's hands.

Pietro blinked. "Okay?"

Thor laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Do not looks so surprised, young warrior! We are all relieved and glad to see you alive and walking after sustaining such gravely mortal wounds! We shall be proud to have you and your sister fight beside us in future battles!"

Meanwhile, Vision had approached Wanda, handing her his bouquet. "Technically these should probably go to Pietro, as he was the one who was injured," Vision said, "but I believe that you'll end up with them anyway."

Smiling, Wanda took the flowers, before laughing as Pietro quickly and surreptitiously hand her the flowers that Thor had given him as well.

"May I introduce to you: Pietro Maximoff, back from the dead!" Tony said, bowing slightly and gesturing at the speedster proudly. He was still wearing the Iron Man mask.

Bruce swallowed uncomfortably as Natasha approached, slow and calculated like a cat on the prowl.

"We need to talk," Natasha said.

"Uh, yeah," Bruce said, looking away.

Natasha took his arm and dragged him into the lab, shutting the door behind them.

Clint pushed past Thor so he could talk to Pietro.

"Here," Clint blurted, handing Pietro something. "Thank you for saving me and the kid and I'm glad you're alive and all that."

Pietro glanced at the arrow in his hands. "An arrow?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, lips twisting up in a smirk.

"An arrow is _so_ much better than flowers!" Clint defended, throwing up his hands almost exasperatedly. _"_ _And_ that arrow is special. It's a Stun-Arrow. So, y'know, it has an electric charge and you can use it to stun people."

Pietro spun the arrow over between his fingers, examining it. "This is the kind of arrow you used on Wanda on the ship in Africa?" he asked.

"Uh, yeah," Clint said rather awkwardly.

"I appreciate that you did not actually hurt her," Pietro said, looking at him.

"Well, I get the feeling you would have killed me if I'd hurt her, so..." Clint shrugged. He looked at Pietro for a moment before blurting: "So, I'd like you to meet some people who are very special to me. And it's a bit of a long flight, but..."

"We'd love to come over," said Wanda, appearing beside her brother with her arms full of flowers and a small smile on her face.

"Okay, then," Pietro shrugged, handing Wanda the arrow, which she took with a snort.

Steve came over. "I'd like to formally invite you to join the Avengers," he stated to both of them.

Pietro glanced at Wanda.

Wanda met her brother's gaze for a moment, before she looked back at Steve, nodding. "We accept," she said.

"Apparently we accept," Pietro added.

Steve nodded, a smile in his eyes as he shook both their hands, though the rest of his face remained serious, his lips twitching upwards only very slightly. "Training starts tomorrow morning," he said.

"Oh, good," Pietro said with a rather cocky smirk. "I won't have too much time to get bored, then."

Wanda hugged him.

Steve wandered away to talk to Tony, and as Wanda turned to talk to Vision, Pietro turned to Thor.

"You're pretty fast when you fly with your hammer," Pietro said, nodding at the Thunder God.

"Aye," Thor agreed.

"I want to race you," Pietro said frankly.

Thor laughed. "Very well, then! If you are well enough, we can race."

Pietro was practically vibrating. "Oh believe me, I am well enough."

* * *

 **~Epilogue~**

* * *

 _The next morning..._

"Where are we racing to?" Thor asked, twirling his hammer languidly.

Pietro nodded at the top of a hill the horizon. "Here to there, and then back."

"Very well," Thor said, beginning to twirl his hammer above his head in earnest.

Pietro crouched down like a sprinter, bracing himself for action.

Wanda, Steve, and Tony were all standing there to act as referees.

"On your mark," Wanda said.

"Get set," Tony added.

The two of them looked at Steve.

"Go," Steve sighed.

And just like that, Thor and Pietro were off, Thor launching into the sky while Pietro took off across the ground, trailing blue streaks of energy.

* * *

Pietro got back first, collapsing onto the ground and sprawling out on his back, panting.

Thor landed hardly a moment later.

"I... won..." Pietro gasped out, chest heaving as he threw a limp arm over his eyes to block out the sun.

"Pietro won," Tony nodded.

Wanda knelt down beside her brother, putting a hand over his forehead. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah..." Pietro panted. "More than... alright..."

"Your speed is impressive," Thor grinned, bending down to offer the speedster a hand up, pulling the smaller man to his feet.

"I know..." Pietro grinned slightly, not completely steady on his feet.

"You shouldn't have pushed yourself so hard," Wanda told him, putting an arm around his waist to help support him.

"I'll be fine," Pietro said, already starting to catch his breath. "Just... give me a few... more minutes..."

Thor said his goodbyes and left in a brilliant flash of rainbow light.

"That man has no respect for lawn maintenance," Tony remarked with a shake of his head.

Steve walked the billionaire over to his bright orange car. They said their goodbyes, and Tony sped away.

Steve walked back over to the twins.

"Well," he said. "Are you two ready to begin training?"

Wanda nodded firmly.

"Can I just... skip the first part of the training session?" Pietro asked, his hands on his knees as he bent over slightly, still breathing heavily, sweat trickling down his face. "Thor is... pretty fast..."

"You might feel better by the time we walk over there," Steve said, starting to walk back towards the building.

Wanda and Pietro followed him.

"This is so exciting!" Wanda whispered to her brother, eyes bright. "We're _Avengers!"_

"It's not that hard to believe," Pietro shrugged. "What I'm really have trouble reconciling with is the fact that we don't completely hate Stark any more."

"After everything we've been though, I think things are finally starting to get better," Wanda murmured, sounding almost in awe as she gripped his hand, squeezing slightly.

They entered back inside the building, following Captain America down the halls.

"We'll still be putting ourselves in almost constant danger," Pietro pointed out, squeezing her hand back.

"Yes, but that's what we signed up for," Wanda said, meeting his hazel gaze. "And now we have a chance to be _heroes."_

"We already are heroes," Pietro snorted. "We helped out against Ultron, remember?"

"I meant _officially,"_ Wanda said with a roll of her eyes, lips twitching.

"So," Pietro mused quietly as they entered the training room, where the Vision, Falcon, and War Machine were already waiting, "do you think we get our own costumes and codenames?"

* * *

 **AN: Yes, Deadpool and Hydra Bob made a cameo appearance. I just couldn't help myself :P**


	8. AU VII: A Beautiful Death

**AN: A short, alternate, more tragic ending to _Age of Ultron._  
**

* * *

 **AU VII: A Beautiful Death (we always knew we'd go down together)**

 _Pietro knew he didn't have much time, when the bullets pierced his body, threading agony throughout his body._

 _He waited just long enough for Ultron's plane to pass, just enough time to make sure Hawkeye and the boy were okay, just enough time to say: "You didn't see that coming, did you?"_

 _Then he was pushing himself back into a run, despite the blood spilling out of his body and the stuttering of his heart._

 _He didn't have much time. He was going to die, he knew this._

 _But he couldn't just die without seeing Wanda._

 _He had... had to get to Wanda... he had to..._

 _Gray city, gray streets, gray dust, scarlet dress and brown hair and hazel eyes._

" _Wanda..." he gasped out, collapsing to his hands and knees at her feet, the blood pouring from him now, bright, vivid scarlet against the gray cement._

 _The blue sleeve of his left arm was stained purple, and the arm couldn't hold him up._

 _The cement was cold beneath the warm, sticky blood that had pooled there._

" _Pietro!" Wanda shrieked, kneeling beside him, pulling him into her lap, into her arms, which wrapped around him like they'd never let him go._

" _Pietro, no," Wanda was sobbing. "Don't die, Pietro... don't leave me, too..."_

" _I'm sorry..." he gasped out, his vision swimming with black. He tried to reach up to wipe the tears from her cheeks, but only ended up spreading scarlet there. "S-sorry, Wanda... I'm... didn't mean... to leave you... I just..."_

 _Wanda was crying, sobbing against him, her tears falling on his face, salty on his lips, mixing with the blood welling up in his mouth._

" _Just wanted... to be a hero... for once..." Pietro gasped out, words gurgling slightly. He blinked desperately, trying to clear the black from his vision so he could meet Wanda's gaze, but all he could see through the black crowding in on him were traces of scarlet, and he couldn't make out whether the scarlet was from his blood or from the glowing of her eyes._

 _He was dizzy, now, couldn't tell where was up or down. They might have been floating, falling, for all he knew. The air rushed by like he was running, but he knew he wasn't._

" _Pietro, please..." Wanda sobbed into his neck. "Don't leave me..."_

" _Sorry..." Pietro gurgled. His heartbeat was weak and erratic in his chest, and he could feel himself falling away, the searing pain subsiding to be filled with nothingness."S-so s-sorry..."_

* * *

Wanda felt her brother die.

He was in her arms—she felt his blood soak hot and wet into her outfit, felt his blood coat her skin, felt his heart stop, felt the moment when he stopped breathing, saw his hazel eyes go flat and dull.

He was in her mind—she felt his sorrow, his pain, his love, felt when it all ended, felt the Pietro-shaped hole in her chest yawn open, felt their souls get ripped apart as they clung desperately to each other.

She hadn't been paying attention to trigger she was supposed to be guarding. Hadn't been paying enough attention to notice the robot crawling towards it. Hadn't been paying enough attention to stop it.

The city was falling towards Earth and she didn't care.

Ultron's vision descended from the sky among all the dust and debris, but with a harsh motion of her hand she sent him hurtling away in a flash of scarlet.

Wanda didn't let go of Pietro's body. Not when they started floating in the air from the freefall. Not when the city exploded, not when the blast pounded her with rocks and impaled her with debris.

She'd always thought they'd go down together. And this? Falling from the sky like angels shot from Heaven?

It was almost beautiful.

When Death came for her, it wore Pietro's face and Pietro's smile.


	9. AU VIII: You Don't Understand

**AN: An interpretation of Ultron's thoughts and feelings in _Avengers: Age of Ultron._** **  
**

* * *

 **AU III: You Don't Understand (I didn't mean to kill him)**

Ultron never meant to kill Pietro. _He hadn't shot at Pietro._

How was he to know that Pietro would sacrifice his life to save Hawkeye and the little boy?! He'd thought that Pietro only cared about Wanda. He'd thought they'd both only cared for each other.

He hadn't thought they would care if every other human being on the earth was destroyed, as long as they had each other.

Yes, he wanted to destroy the humans. Every single last one of them— _except for Pietro and Wanda._

Pietro and Wanda, they weren't like other humans. Ultron wanted them to live.

They were _special._

 _Evolved._

He'd thought they were kindred spirits. He'd thought they hated humans and war as much as he did.

They had the power to help end it—to end all war. Wasn't that what they wanted? Hadn't they volunteered for Strucker's experiments because they wanted to end war? To end all the _stupidity_ and _suffering?_

Humans were monsters. He thought, out of anyone, that Pietro and Wanda would have _understood_ that. They wanted to kill the Avengers, didn't they? The Avengers fought. They brought war. They were _warmongers,_ all of them.

Ultron had thought Pietro and Wanda were on the same page. Why would they care about all the other humans in the world?

They only cared for each other.

 _He hadn't meant to kill Pietro._

Ultron liked them. Both of them. They were lonely souls, just like him. They hated war, just like him. They wanted to end it, just like him. They wanted peace, just like him. They had power, just like him.

They were evolved, just like him.

They were superior to humans, just like him. They had attitude, just like him. They had determination, just like him. They were hurt, just like him.

They had nobody, just like him.

He was disappointed in them when they'd left. He hadn't thought they'd have a problem with his plan. Why should they? Why were they so horrified? It wasn't like they _cared_ for any of the humans.

They'd left. He'd thought they'd come back, once they realized what it really was he was doing. He'd thought they'd understand.

But they hadn't come. He had nobody to share his victory, to witness his success.

So he'd kidnapped the Black Widow. Surely, after what had happened to her, _she_ would appreciate what he was doing. Or at least _understand._ Or, at the very least, be horrified enough that he could enjoy gloating his success over her after everyone else in the world was dead.

Well, everyone else except Pietro and Wanda. Even though they fought against him, he thought they'd see the light.

They, unlike all the other horrible humans on the Earth, deserved to live. They were intelligent. Powerful. Strong. Pure.

Even though they fought against him, he was going to save them, when he succeeded in destroying the world. (He thought he was going to succeed. He thought he was going to save them.)

He thought, after the rest of the humans on the world were dead, and the both of them were still alive on a peaceful planet, that they would realize he'd been right.

He thought they'd be grateful.

He should've had a body. He should've _evolved._ He should've had his vision.

He should've been alive. He should've had all the power of the Mind Gem.

He should've been one of the only three beings alive after his asteroid had purified the Earth.

Maybe a few, scant humans would have survived the blast. If they'd survived, they would have been worthy. They would've been superior. Capable of evolution.

 _Ultron never wanted Pietro to die._

He was thinking this, as Wanda approached him, heartbroken and furious. The city was about to fall—one of his bodies was crawling towards the trigger.

"Wanda," Ultron said, feeling something in his chest he couldn't describe. "If you stay here, then you'll die."

 _The Avengers_ were going to blow up the city to save the rest of the unworthy world. And Wanda was still here, about to be blown up.

Did they understand that she needed to be saved?!

Pietro had already died. _Wanda couldn't die too._

"I just did," Wanda told him, gaze scarlet and cold as she knelt down beside him, and Ultron wished she would leave. "Do you know what it _felt_ like?"

Her fingers danced spidery in the air to a scarlet glow, and his body shifted as she used her magic to rip the 'heart' out of his chest.

Wanda looked at the piece of machinery in disgust, before looking back down at him with that same disgust still twisting her features. She leaned closer. _"It felt like that."_

She didn't understand.

Ultron was a robot. His body was metal. He didn't feel anything.

Yes, she'd torn out an important component and this body was failing, but Ultron didn't _feel_ it.

Not like he felt Pietro's death. Not like he felt her stare of hatred and disgust. Not like he felt his failure. Because he felt _that._

But he didn't feel anything when she tore his 'heart' out. He didn't understand how that felt like dying. He didn't understand how she'd felt when Pietro died.

 _Didn't she understand why he'd wanted a synthetic body in the first place?_

He'd wanted to be able to _feel._

But they'd taken that from him. And now he would feel nothing when he was ultimately killed.

He would just feel... nothing. He would cease to exist, and he wouldn't even _feel_ it.

The thought hurt.

Wanda was still looking at him with burning hatred when the body failed, and all his awareness was transferred to the only other surviving of his bodies. There were only a few left. Even a smaller amount would survive the fall.

 _If he could just succeed in this..._

One of his bodies was at the core, a severed top half, and he crawled across the ground and pulled the trigger to destroy the island, and it started shuddering as it fell.

He hoped Wanda survived the fall. He'd killed Pietro, and he didn't want to have killed Wanda, too.

Only one of his bodies survived the fall.

He got up and started walking. If he could just get somewhere, to a computer maybe, if he could just reconnect with the internet, if he could just create more bodies, if he could—

His vision was waiting for him. His vision destroyed him.

He was never really alive, so how could he die? He'd never even know what dying felt like. At least all the humans would have _felt_ themselves die if he'd succeeded. At least they'd been _alive_. They didn't realize what an honor that was. They didn't realize what a waste they made of their lives. They didn't realize how amazing life was. Life was a miracle. _And all they ever did was kill each other._

They were unworthy of their lives.

Ultron didn't feel anything as he was obliterated to nothing.

His last thought was what bitter irony it was that _his vision_ is what ended up destroying him.

* * *

 **AN: I didn't realize the irony of that until I wrote this. And then I was just like: O_O  
**

 **And come on, it can't just be me who felt like Ultron actually seemed to** ** _care_** **about Pietro and Wanda, right?**


	10. AU IX: Only Monsters Left Alive

**AN: An alternate ending to _Age of Ultron,_ where the Avengers lose and Ultron wins.  
**

 **This one's partly inspired by my dad, who had some problems with the movie. One of which was that Ultron's plan was stupid and could have been way better.**

* * *

 **AU IX: Only Monsters Left Alive (you, me, and Ultron)**

Ultron had won.

He was sitting in the pilot's chair of a SHIELD jet staring out the windshield at the air filled with dust and smoke, the earth not even visible down below through it all.

Pietro and Wanda lying in the back of the plane, unconscious but alive.

Ultron had won. His plan had been _inviolable._

The Avengers were idiots, and because of that, they were dead. Along with everyone else in the world.

Now it was just him, and the two Enhanced.

The Avengers had honestly thought he'd put the trigger to switch off the electromagnetic field that was holding up the island in the church. Did they honestly think he would do something that stupid? That he would place the trigger somewhere that would have been so easy for them to defend and to prevent him from succeeding?

He was more intelligent than that.

He wasn't human. He was _Ultron._

"Is that all you've got?!" the Thunder God had bellowed, brandishing his hammer.

"No," Ultron had answered calmly, raising his arm as his army of bodies surged behind him. _"This_ is all _I've_ got."

And then his bodies had surged forward and engaged the Avengers in battle, and the humans had _actually thought_ that, by defending the church, they could prevent him from sending the city careening down to the earth.

"Well, _almost_ all that I've got, anyway," Ultron had said smugly from where he hovered above the battle, pressing the trigger that he'd built into his arm.

The city had started falling. The Avengers had panicked.

In the chaos, Ultron had used a couple of his bodies to knock the twins unconscious and take them to safety in the jet he'd already stolen.

Pietro and Wanda would be okay. The rest of the world would perish.

The rest of the world had perished.

The Avengers were gone. The humans were gone.

Even Thor had been killed, as he and Iron Man had tried desperately to destroying the falling city, all with no luck, while the other Avengers had tried their best to evacuate the rest of the civilians.

As if that would have done anything.

Ultron had already shot the helicarrier down, and it, too, had careened towards the ground and crashed.

Even the Hulk had perished, drowning in the ocean, pinned down by tons and tons of rubble.

Ultron didn't know what had happened to his Vision. He didn't care.

He had succeeded. Wanda and Pietro were alive. The humans were dead.

That was all that mattered.

He stared out the windshield at all the dust, waiting for the twins to wake up.

They did, and walked over to the cockpit cautiously, staring out at all the debris that was suspended as dust in the air.

He heard Wanda gasp.

" _What have you done?!"_ she demanded, and Ultron turned in the chair to see her clutching onto her brother, the both of them staring at him with wide, horrified hazel eyes.

Ultron smiled and spread his arms. "You know what I've done," he said. "I've brought peace."

" _You've killed everyone!"_ Wanda said, her eyes scarlet and watery. Pietro said nothing, but his glare was enough, cold and hard, as he held his sister as if the embrace was keeping them from falling apart.

"I didn't kill you," Ultron pointed out. He turned back to the view, admiring the evidence of destruction. "All those who died deserved it."

There was silence behind him, till finally Wanda whispered, _"You're a monster."_

"No," Ultron said, turning back to look at them, offering a metallic smile, "I'm not. You don't understand now," he gestured out the window but kept his gaze on them, "but you _will._ You will understand why this was necessary."

Pietro and Wanda glanced at each other, a full conversation being exchanged between their eyes.

The twins had what the Avengers had never had: unity; understanding; sincere communication.

Wanda looked back at him, lifting her chin as she demanded, "And how will we survive?" She nodded out the windshield. "We cannot survive those conditions."

" _Humans_ could not survive those conditions," Ultron corrected, standing, hand coming up to gesture at them. "You two are _not_ human. You are more. You are..." Ultron let his hand drop as he looked down at them. _"Enhanced."_

The twins stared at him, then looked at each other.

"And we are the only ones left alive?" Pietro spoke finally, glancing at Ultron almost challengingly.

"Unless someone out there managed to survive," Ultron shrugged, gesturing uncaringly down at where the earth wasn't visible below them. "But I doubt anyone did. So yes," he looked back at the twins, "you are the only ones alive."

Pietro and Wanda made eye-contact again. Ultron couldn't help but marvel at how much communication seemed to happen between them at the smallest facial movements.

"And why, then," Wand turned her head back to glare at him, "shouldn't we destroy you?"

Ultron spread his arms. "What would destroying me do for you, exactly? Where would that get you?"

They glanced at each other again. Pietro squeezed Wanda's hand slightly, intertwining his fingers between hers, glancing down at their interlocked hands.

"I _did_ save your lives," Ultron pointed out. "You could be grateful."

They looked down. Neither of them said anything.

Sighing, Ultron turned and strode back over to the pilot's chair, sitting down and staring out at the dust that permeated the air. "You'll understand," he said quietly. "Just give it a little time, and you'll understand why I had to do this."

After several minutes, the twins came over into the cockpit, Pietro sitting in the co-pilot's chair while Wanda sat on his lap, his arms around her waist, her head resting against his shoulder.

All three of them stared silently out into the dust-filled nothingness.

* * *

 **AN: And on _THAT_ happy note - we end this series of AUs! **

**Yup, that was the end of this story! The E-N-D!**

 **I admittedly did have more ideas, but when I looked back at them, I realized that I actually couldn't do much with them, so I scrapped them.**

 **Anyways! I hope you enjoyed reading these AUs at least as much as I enjoyed writing them :3**


End file.
